Are Kingstonian finally getting their own ground again?

Something is moving

Kingstonian are the club that built its own stadium and then spent a generation without one. That's the short version of the last twenty-four years, and it's why any suggestion of a ground of their own gets attention from people who've heard it before.

New investment is understood to be coming into the club, and a site in Surbiton is being discussed as a possible home. Neither has been announced, no deal has been confirmed, and the club has said nothing publicly. Anyone who has followed Kingstonian for any length of time will know to hold both loosely.

But it isn't coming from nowhere. Supporters have been openly discussing Surbiton options on the club's own forum since early 2025 — the sports ground, the town sports club, and the borough's athletics stadium, which the board is understood to have approached the council about in 2022. Before that there were efforts around Lovelace and the Hawker site. This is a club that has been looking for a home, seriously and publicly, for years.

What would make this attempt different is money. Every previous plan has run into the same wall: a non-league club with no ground has no reliable income and nothing to borrow against, which makes building anything close to impossible. Investment changes that arithmetic, or it doesn't. That's the question worth watching.

Sold once, for nothing

Kingstonian were founded in 1885, won the FA Trophy twice at Wembley under Geoff Chapple, and spent three seasons in the Conference between 1998 and 2001.

In 1989 they did the thing every non-league club is told to do and almost none manage. They built themselves a ground. Kingsmeadow, off Jack Goodchild Way in Norbiton, capacity a shade under five thousand, replacing the older and rattlier Richmond Road. Kingston Council owned the land underneath, and the lease Kingstonian held was meant to protect the site for the borough's football team.

Then the club went into administration and lost the lease in October 2001. In April 2002 the administrators assigned it to a property developer who by that point also owned the club.

And this is the part that has quietly determined everything since. In 2003 that lease was sold to the newly formed AFC Wimbledon for £2.4m — and the money went to the owners, not to Kingstonian. The club that had built the ground received none of the proceeds when it was sold. What it got instead was permission to stay on at what amounted to a peppercorn rent.

For over a decade that worked well enough. Kingstonian held a 25-year sub-tenancy with break clauses. Not ownership, but security, which is most of what a non-league club needs.

Sold twice, for something

In November 2015, AFC Wimbledon's members voted overwhelmingly to sell Kingsmeadow to Chelsea to help fund their return to Plough Lane. The sale completed the following June, for a reported £2m. From Wimbledon's side, that was the deal that took them home. Chelsea wanted the ground for their women's and youth teams and weren't willing to keep Kingstonian on.

This time, though, the club was paid. AFC Wimbledon gave Kingstonian around £1m — roughly half of what they had received — a sum they said reflected the position the club had been left in. The majority was ringfenced to be spent on a stadium. Wimbledon's then chief executive, Erik Samuelson, characterised it as enough to give the K's an equity share in a ground of their own, or failing that, to cover many years of rent somewhere else.

Kingstonian's co-chairman at the time, Mark Anderson, spoke of the club "paying for the sins of the past" while facing the chance to build something of its own. The sins in question were somebody else's, committed in 2003.

You can't play at a ground whose owner doesn't want you there. Kingstonian left in 2017.

Nine years, five hosts

Leatherhead first, at Fetcham Grove — ten miles and half an hour away. Then King George's Field in Tolworth with Corinthian-Casuals. Then Imperial Fields, home of Tooting & Mitcham. Then Prince George's Playing Fields in Raynes Park, sharing with Raynes Park Vale for two seasons.

And from this season, the Robert Parker Stadium in Stanwell, home of Ashford Town (Middlesex) — a two-season deal with an option on a third, announced in March. The draw was the 3G pitch, installed during 2024-25; Kingstonian had already been moving home matches there to avoid postponements.

Five hosts in ten seasons, none of them in Kingston.

Which is the uncomfortable part. The money arrived, most of it earmarked for a stadium, and at the time there was a site: the former Chessington Golf Centre, still inside the borough if only just. Even in 2017 it was described as slow-moving and in some doubt. It came to nothing, as did Lovelace, as did the Hawker site. Nine years and five groundshares later there is no ground, and what remains of the fund is not public.

Samuelson's phrasing has aged into something close to a warning. The money was enough for equity in a stadium, or for years of rent. Only one of those leaves a club with anything at the end of it.

What being a tenant does to a club is easy to say and hard to overstate. A homeless club can't build a matchday. It can't sell hospitality it doesn't control or run a bar on its own terms. It can't ask supporters to keep making an unfamiliar journey to a ground with someone else's name on the gate. Almost everything a non-league club earns, it earns through its ground — and a tenant owns none of it.

They finished 13th of 22 in the Isthmian League South Central Division last season, three promotions below the National League. Adult admission this season is £12.

And there's a detail in this season's fixtures that makes the point better than any of the above. Ashford Town (Middlesex) won the Combined Counties Premier Division North last season and are promoted back into the Isthmian South Central Division — the same division Kingstonian are in. Their landlords are now their league rivals. An Ashford season ticket includes half-price entry to Kingstonian's home games. At the K's home matches, the home side is the tenant.

What Kingstonian receive from a matchday at Stanwell, if anything beyond the gate, is not public. Ashford's own annual meeting described the groundshare as helping their move towards financial stability, which tells you something about one side of the arrangement and nothing about the other. The terms are a private commercial agreement between two clubs.

Sold a third time

Chelsea Women played at Kingsmeadow for nine seasons. In April 2026 the club announced they would move to Stamford Bridge from 2026-27, keeping the ground for youth and academy football.

The same month, Chelsea's accounts for the year to June 2025 revealed the stadium had changed hands again — sold within the group to Chelsea FC Women for almost £12m, part of a wider £22.6m paid by the women's team to the parent company. The Premier League assessed and approved the Kingsmeadow valuation as fair market value under its associated party transaction rules, and Chelsea were found compliant with profitability and sustainability rules for that year, despite a record pre-tax loss of £262.4m.

There is nothing irregular in that. Intra-group sales are permitted, this one was independently assessed, and the league approved it.

But line the numbers up.

1989 — built by Kingstonian, a non-league club, for its own use. 2003 — lease sold for £2.4m. The club received nothing. 2016 — sold on for around £2m, with roughly half passed to Kingstonian. 2025 — sold within Chelsea's group for almost £12m.

The club that built it is four divisions down, playing in someone else's ground, charging twelve quid at the gate.

Why the ground is the whole story

It would be easy to write this as nostalgia. It isn't.

For almost every club below the Premier League, the ground is the only thing they own that matters. It's where the money comes from — gate, bar, hospitality, the sponsor's name on the stand. And it's the only asset worth enough for anyone to lend against.

Lose it and you lose both at once: the income and the ability to borrow. What's left is a club funded by results and goodwill, which are the two least reliable things in football.

That's why the ground is usually the first thing sold when a club gets into trouble, and why who receives the proceeds matters as much as the sale itself. In 2003 the ground went and the club got nothing. It survived, and twenty-three years later it is still paying for that transaction.

It also explains why a payment, however fair, was never going to be the answer on its own. A million pounds buys land or it buys time. It does not buy planning permission, a willing council, or a site in a borough where almost every square foot has a better-paying use than football.

Which is why the current talk matters more than the usual round of ground rumours. A club can survive a long time in someone else's stadium. It just can't grow there.