Newbury, Berkshire: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

For other places called Newbury, see Newbury.

Newbury is the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in the United Kingdom. It was founded late in the eleventh century and acquired its name through being new in the sense of postdating the Doomesday Survey.

Historically, the town's economic foundation was the cloth trade. This is reflected in the person of the fourteenth century cloth magnate Jack O'Newbury 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 a day from wool taken from the sheep's back earlier the same day.

Newbury was the site of two English Civil War battles in 1643 and 1644. The nearby castle at Donnington was reduced in the aftermath of the second battle.

In 1795, local magistrates, meeting nearby, introduced the Speenhamland System which tied parish welfare payments to the cost of bread.

A large airforce base was established during the Second World War at Greenham Common on the edge of the town. After the war became home to US Air Force bombers in the 1950s, and later in the 1980s one of only two bases in the UK equipped with ground-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles (and incidently the longest runway in the UK). It was the site of prolonged and vigorous protests by up to 40,000 protesters but with the end of the Cold War the base was closed and most of it restored to heathland.

The town's location at the intersection of the routes from London to Bristol and from Southampton to Birmingham made it, for many years, a transport bottleneck. Since the first bypass opened in 1963, the A34 road and M4 motorway trunk routes have intersected 5km north of the town, at Chieveley, where the junction is now being upgraded. The ring road around the town still suffered serious congestion and a new bypass was proposed in 1981. The plans were passed in a closed Parliament session in 1990 after a pro forma hearing, a procedure by many considered undemocratic. Despite massive resistance (1), the road was built and finally opened in 1998. This decision was highly controversial and led to a major environmentalist campaign to oppose the development. The confrontation between demonstrators (many veterans of the protest against M27 extension at Twyford Down) and contractors was dubbed the Third Battle of Newbury. More than 800 arrests were made, making it one of the largest environmental conflicts in European history. On February 11 1996, 5,000 people marched along the route in objection to the road (2).

Some of the protesters at Newbury had been living in tree top shacks for up to a year in advance. They became known as tree sitters.

1. 53% of respondents to a national poll said that "work should stop immediately to allow time for alternatives to be tried" (Newbury Weekly News, March 10 1996).
2. The Guardian, February 12 1996.

Today, Newbury has a population of about 32,000 (2004), and with adjacent towns such as Thatcham the municipality has an overall population of around 60,000. It is the administrative capital for the West Berkshire district. It is also home to the mobile phone company Vodafone, which is the largest employer with 4,000 people and the UK headquarters of the pharmaceutical company Bayer AG.

It has a picturesque town centre containing many seventeenth century buildings with the Kennet and Avon Canal running though it. It is also home to Newbury Racecourse, a major course on the British horse-racing calendar, and the runs through the centre of it.

Newbury is twinned with Braunfels in Germany, Bagnols-sur-Ceze in France and Eeklo in Belgium.

Geography and Location

Aerial map