Hampton is a suburb of Greater London on the north bank of the River Thames, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England, and the historic county of Middlesex. Hampton is bounded by Bushy Park to the east (and to the north of St Albans Riverside facing Tagg's Island), the suburbs of Hampton Hill and Fulwell to the north, green belt to the west, and the Thames to the south.

Historically, the manor of Hampton included Hampton Court Palace (and Bushy Park), Hampton Hill, and Hampton Wick (which are now known collectively as "The Hamptons"). Originally settled in Saxon times, the manor was awarded to the Norman lord Walter of Saint-Valéry following the 1066 Norman Conquest, passed by his heirs to the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1237, and acquired by Henry VIII following the Act of Supremacy 1534 (26 Hen. 8. c. 1). The enclosure of common land in 1811 and rapid growth of 19th-century London saw agricultural fields converted to market gardens, and later nurseries. The construction of the Hampton Water Treatment Works in the late 1850s and early 1860s, and the opening of the Shepperton Branch Line to London Waterloo in 1864, led to a steady growth in the population of Hampton, and fields in south Hampton near the station being converted to suburban housing in the late 19th century and interwar period. Refrigeration, air freight and cheaper overseas labour ultimately rendered the market gardens and nurseries uncompetitive and derelict, and after a lengthy planning process the Nurserylands estate was established in north Hampton in the 1980s.

Today Hampton is a primarily residential suburb of Greater London. The population at the 2021 Census was 27,307 (20,000 excluding Hampton Hill).

The River Thames was displaced southwards to its present course through Berkshire and London following the Anglian glaciation c. 450,000 BCE. The local geology comprises Kempton Park Gravel above London Clay, on which the Thames deposits fertile, well-drained alluvial soils, making it an attractive area for human habitation and settlement.

There is evidence of small hunter-gatherer communities in the Thames Valley in the Palaeolithic period, who would have hunted migrating animal herds (reindeer and horse) depending on seasonal conditions. Hand-axes and a flint from that era have been recovered from sites in Hampton, indicating the presence of human activity as early as the Wolstonian Stage.

The resettlement of Britain following the Last Glacial Maximum and the start of the Holocene is evidenced in Hampton and surrounding areas by the artefacts (predominantly flintwork) of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who would have favoured the diversity of habitats and food resources offered by rivers and their floodplains for settlement and resource procurement. Three Mesolitihic tranchet axes were discovered during construction of the Hampton Waterworks.

Evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement activity in the area is widespread, during a period when the level of the River Thames would have been significantly lower than at present. Finds on Garrick's Ait (Neolithic stone axe), Hurst Park (Neolithic pits), and Platt's Eyot (early Bronze Age axe); and the excavation in 1854 of a significant Bronze Age barrow in Bushy Park (containing the cremated remains and offerings of a local chieftain) indicate the transition to settled agriculture.

Before the Roman invasion of Britain, the Hampton area was occupied by the Catuvellauni, a Celtic tribe with its centre of government at Watamestede, near modern-day St Albans. There is little archaeological evidence of Roman activity in the Hampton area (which was concentrated around the river crossing at Kingston-upon-Thames), except for a small collection of finds at Hampton Hill, a corn drier in Hurst Park, and field boundaries laid out to Roman proportions in what would become Bushy Park.