In message
,
John B writes

The historic county town of Surrey is Guildford, but for reasons that
aren't entirely clear the county administration was moved to Southwark
in the 1790s.

At that time the main venue for the Surrey Quarterly Sessions was
Kennington and, before the Acts of the late Victorian period, the
Quarterly Sessions were responsible for a number of functions that are
now the responsibility of councils, such as licensing, road repair and
the like.

Much the same happened in Middlesex, where the Quarterly Sessions were
held in Clerkenwell before moving out to Westminster.

Both no doubt due to the fact that the judiciary and legal teams had
little distance to travel from the Inns of Court in Temple and around
Holborn.

After the Local Government Act 1888 moved Southwark into
the County of London, they had to find a new site - bizarrely, given
that it was already becoming suburban London even at this point, they
chose Kingston.

They considered six alternatives: Epsom, Guildford, Kingston, Redhill,
Surbiton and Wimbledon.

I suspect that Kingston appealed to the historically-minded Victorians
because of its association with the coronation of ancient kings - plus
the fact that it had two gaols to support the local judicial work.

With hindsight, we can see that it's absorption into the metropolis was
inevitable, but I doubt that was the case at the time: a lot of the
early intensive housing in outer SW London dates from after 1900.

--
Paul Terry