Newbury is a market town in West Berkshire, England, in the valley of the River Kennet. It is south of Oxford, north of Winchester, southeast of Swindon and west of Reading. It is also where West Berkshire Council is headquartered.
Newbury lies on the edge of the Berkshire Downs, part of the North Wessex Downs Area of outstanding natural beauty, north of the Hampshire–Berkshire county boundary. In the suburban village of Donnington lies the part-ruined Donnington Castle and the surrounding hills are home to some of the country's most famous racehorse training grounds (centred on nearby Lambourn). To the south is a narrower range of hills including Walbury Hill and a few private landscape gardens and mansions, such as Highclere Castle. The local economy is inter-related to that of the eastern M4 corridor, which has most of its industrial, logistical and research businesses close to Newbury, mostly around Reading, Bracknell, Maidenhead and Slough. Together with the adjoining town of Thatcham, distant, Newbury forms the principal part of an urban area of approximately 70,000 people.
Newbury is also home to Newbury Racecourse, as well as being the location of the headquarters of Vodafone. The town centres around a large market square and retains a rare medieval Cloth Hall, an adjoining half timbered granary, and the 15th-century St Nicolas Church, along with 17th- and 18th-century listed buildings.
History
There was a Mesolithic settlement at Newbury. Artefacts were recovered from the Greenham Dairy Farm in 1963, and the Faraday Road site in 2002."An Early Mesolithic Seasonal Hunting Site in the Kennet Valley, Southern England" by C.J. Ellis, Michael J. Allen, Julie Gardiner, Phil Harding, Claire Ingrem, Adrienne Powell & Robert G. Scaife Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 69: (2003) Additional material was found in excavations along the route of the Newbury Bypass.Birbeck, Vaughan (2000) Archaeological Investigations on the A34 Newbury Bypass, Berkshire/Hampshire, 1991-7 Trust for Wessex Archaeology Ltd., ; Newbury was founded late in the 11th century following the Norman conquest as a new borough, hence its name. Although there are references to the borough that predate the Domesday Book it is not mentioned by name in the survey. However, its existence within the manor of Ulvritone is evident from the massive rise in value of that manor at a time when most manors were worth less than in Saxon times. In 1086 the Domesday Book assesses the borough as having land for 12 ploughs, 2 mills, woodland for 25 pigs, 11 villeins (resident farmhands, unfree peasant who owed his lord labour services), 11 bordars (unfree peasants with less land than villans/villeins), and 51 enclosures (private parks) rendering 70s 7d.
Doubt has been cast over the existence of Newbury Castle, but the town did have royal connections and was visited a number of times by King John and Henry III while hunting in the area. The first reference to a bridge on the site of the current Newbury Bridge is an account of its reconstruction in the 14th Century. In 1312, King Edward II directed that its bridge should be kept in good order. By 1623, when the bridge collapsed, it was recorded as being built of wood, being in length and in width, and having shops on it. The bridge was presumably rebuilt, as it is recorded that in 1644 a guard was placed on the bridge.
Historically, the town's economic foundation was the cloth trade. This is reflected in the person of the 16th-century cloth magnate, Jack of Newbury, the proprietor of what may well have been the first factory in England, and the later tale of the Newbury Coat. The latter was the outcome of a bet as to whether a gentleman's suit could be produced by the end of the day from wool taken from a sheep's back at the beginning. The local legend was later immortalized in a humorous novel by Elizabethan writer Thomas Deloney. Newbury was the site of two battles during the English Civil War, the First Battle of Newbury (at Wash Common) in 1643, and the Second Battle of Newbury (at Speen) in 1644. The nearby Donnington Castle was reduced to a ruin in the aftermath of the second battle. The disruption of trade during the civil war, compounded by a collapse of the local cloth trade in the late 16th century, left Newbury impoverished.
The local economy was boosted in the 18th century by the rise of Bath as a popular destination for the wealthy escaping London's summer heat and associated stench. Newbury was roughly halfway between London and Bath and an obvious stopping point in the two-day journey. Soon Newbury, and the Speenhamland area in particular, was filled with coaching inns of ever increasing grandeur and size. One inn, the George & Pelican, was reputed to have stabling for 300 horses. A theatre was built to provide the travellers with entertainment featuring the major stars of the age. In 1795 local magistrates, meeting at the George and Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, introduced the Speenhamland System which tied parish poor relief (welfare payments) to the cost of bread.
In 1723, the Kennet Navigation made the River Kennet navigable downstream from Newbury to the River Thames in Reading. Some 70 years later, in 1794, work started on the centre section of the Kennet and Avon Canal, which would extend the Kennet Navigation to Bath, thus providing a through water route between London and Bristol via Newbury. This route was finally completed in 1810. The opening of the Great Western Railway from London to Bath in 1841 effectively killed the canal and coaching trades, and as the line passed some to the north it brought no advantage to the town. had to wait until 1847 to join the railway network, with the opening of the Berks and Hants Railway branch line from to via Newbury, and until 1906 to be on a main line, with the opening of the Reading-Taunton line. As a result, Newbury became something of a backwater market town, with an economy based largely on agriculture and horse-racing. The last use of the stocks in Newbury, and probably the UK, was on 11 June 1872 when Mark Tuck was placed in them for 4 hours. In the 1980s, British electronics firm Racal decided to locate their newly formed telecommunications company Racal Vodafone, later Vodafone UK, in the town. In the subsequent decades Newbury became something of a regional centre for the high-tech industries, and the town has since enjoyed a return to general economic prosperity.
Greenham Common
A large Royal Air Force station was established during the Second World War in 1942 at Greenham Common on the edge of the town. In the 1950s, it became home to US Air Force bombers and tankers, for which it was equipped with the longest military runway in the United Kingdom. In the 1980s, it became one of only two USAF bases in the UK equipped with ground-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles, causing it to become the site of protests by up to 40,000 protesters and the establishment of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. With the end of the Cold War, the base was closed, the runway was broken up, much of it used as fill material in building the Newbury bypass, and the area was restored to heathland. This project then saw Greenham and Crookham commons reopened to the public in 2000.
1943 bombing On 10 February 1943, two German bombers, Dornier Do 217s from ll/KG40 Bomber unit in Holland, on a nuisance raid, followed the Great Western Railway line running west from London. One of the bombers headed towards Reading while the other followed the line all the way to Newbury. At 4:43pm the bomber dropped eight high-explosive bombs over the town. There had been no time for a warning siren. The Senior Council School, St. Bartholomew's Almshouses, St. John's Church (just the altar was left standing) and Southampton Terrace were all destroyed, and another 265 dwellings were damaged, many of which had to be demolished. St John's Church was completely rebuilt after the war. 15 people were killed and a further 41 people were injured, 25 seriously.
Government
There are two tiers of local government covering Newbury, at parish (town) and unitary authority level: Newbury Town Council and West Berkshire Council. The town council is based at the Town Hall in the Market Place. West Berkshire Council is also based in the town, having its headquarters on Market Street.
Newbury Town Council currently has 23 councillors, representing seven wards of the town, currently: Brummel Grove, Clay Hill, Falkland, Northcroft, Pyle Hill, Victoria and St Johns. In the 2023 United Kingdom local elections, the Liberal Democrats retained control of the town council, with 21 councillors elected, alongside 2 Green Party councillors.
In the House of Commons, the town is in the Newbury constituency. Since the General Election of July 2024 this constituency has been represented by Lee Dillon, a Liberal Democrat. From 1999 to 2020 Newbury was part of the South East England European Parliament constituency electing MEPs by proportional representation.
Administrative history Newbury was an ancient borough. Its date of incorporation as a borough is unknown; the name implies it was founded as a borough, and the earliest known documentary reference to it explicitly being a borough is from 1189. The earliest known municipal charter was granted in 1596. The borough covered the same area as the parish of Newbury. It was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1836 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which standardised how most boroughs operated across the country.
The municipal borough and parish of Newbury were abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, becoming part of the larger Newbury district. The Newbury district councillors who represented the area of the former borough then acted as charter trustees to preserve the town's mayoralty and civic traditions, in the absence of the town having its own town council.
In the mid-1990s, the government decided to abolish Berkshire County Council and pass its functions to the county's six district councils, including Newbury District Council. Ahead of the change coming into force, the district council decided to establish a new parish of Newbury, and also to change the district's name to West Berkshire. (See downloadable boundary-legislation-changes-from-1973.xls spreadsheet.) The new parish of Newbury and its town council were established in 1997. Newbury District Council took over county-level functions from the abolished county council and was renamed West Berkshire Council on 1 April 1998.
Twin towns The twinning ceremonies were held at the Corn Exchange. Newbury is twinned with the following: Braunfels in Germany (1963) Bagnols-sur-Cèze in France (1970) Eeklo in Belgium (1974) Feltre in Italy (2003) Carcaixent in Spain. (2019)
Geography
The Civil Parish of Newbury consists of the town and the suburbs of Wash Common, The City, West Fields, East Fields and Speenhamland. The modern conurbation of Newbury, however, with close bus and road links and almost contiguous development, may be taken to include the surrounding villages of Speen, Donnington, Shaw and Greenham. Speen, which is now a suburb of western Newbury, is roughly equidistant between Bristol and London.
Elevations vary from a minimum of 72 m above mean sea level to 122 m at Wash Common. Elevations reach 150–200 m in the directly adjoining hills. The River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal flow east through the centre of the town to reach the Thames at Reading, while the River Lambourn (beside which is the country's largest horse-training paddocks in the Valley of the Lambourn Downs) partly forms its northern boundary, ending in the town. A tributary that is smaller still, the River Enborne, forms the southern boundary (and also the county boundary with Hampshire).