Castle Street was hailed as the London area's largest and most imaginative new retail development when it was completed in 1939.

It had taken years to make it a reality. For it meant carving a brand new thoroughfare through the densely occupied land separating Clarence Street from Fife Road.

But first there had to be long negotiations to persuade owners to part with their sites, and Kingston Council to approve a plan which dramatically changed both the face and the pedestrian footfall of central Kingston at that time.

It is often claimed that the new street got its name because the Earl of Warwick is supposed - erroneously - to have built a substantial castle close by.

In fact, it was named after Sydney Castle, whose family had been shipbuilders and brokers since the days of Samuel Pepys, who mentions them in his diaries.

Sydney Castle was a JP in Kingston, and entertained royalty at Woodbines, his riverside mansion in Portsmouth Road - after which which Woodbines Road is named. Presumably he also owned, or had connections with, the land through which Castle Street took shape.

Agents Healey and Baker were given the task of marketing the new thoroughfare.

"Careful study of the movement of pedestrian shoppers in this Royal borough has clearly shown that a vast majority of the tremendous inflow to Kingston arrive by way of the stations - railway or London Transport," it says in a brochure, now held by Kingston Museum's local history collection at the North Kingston Centre.

"Kingston has needed further shopping facilities to cope with the immense volume of trade for many years.

"Castle Street will therefore be welcomed by traders hitherto debarred by uneconomic rentals and scarcity of suitable modern premises from sharing in the prosperity of this wonderful centre... Land values here are great, and largely owing to this fact, no such extensive scheme has previously been possible. Never before has the bold plan of a complete new thoroughfare, linking main streets and stations, been carried out in such an important shopping centre."

The brochure cites Kingston's low rates of only nine shillings and two pence in the pound as a great inducement to prospective traders, together with the council's "wise provision of excellent parking facilities, largely free".

It adds: "It is not unknown for 10,000 cars to pass through the town in a day, and one of the large stores is said to have had more than 100,000 shoppers through its establishment in 12 hours." (Now more than 65,000 vehicles go through the town and around 250,000 shoppers use the Bentall Centre each day).

The new street offered 40 shop units in a thousand-foot parade. At the same time, the station end of Fife Road had been redeveloped to form what the planners believed would be Kingston's great new shopping precinct of the future.

The commanding positions on the corner of Clarence Street were soon snapped up (by The Fifty Shilling Tailors on the west side, and James Walker, the jewellers, on the east). Then, the declaration of World War II in September 1939 put all hopes of a bright future on hold.

Nevertheless, by March 1940, ten further shops had been let to a baker, butcher, fruiterer, grocer, tobacconist, tailor, lending library, patissier and radio specialist.

Most of the other new shops, including those in Fife Road, were bricked up and used as food depots until the war ended. It's fitting that this fine street, whose debut was so cruelly blighted by war, has no been given a handsome refurbishment, and next Monday will be given the ceremonial denied it 67 years ago.

It will be formally "re-opened" at 11am by Councillor Chrissie Hitchcock, chairman of Kingston Town Neighbourhood Committee, and an elegant new street clock, provided by Kingston Rotary, will be unveiled by Lady Grantchester.

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