| |
| The
history of Newbury – a tale of corn,
wool, horses and phones. |
| British, Celts, Romans and
Saxons had all farmed the Kennet Valley before
a Norman knight hit on the idea of starting
a town at Newbury. |
| |
| It would doubtless have happened
sooner or later. The busy river crossing was
a day’s ride from the ancient cities
of Oxford, Winchester, Salisbury and Wallingford
– a perfect stopover. |
| |
| Back then, crossing the valley
was a treacherous affair for most of the year.
The meandering riverbed was thick with reeds,
and the woods were almost impenetrable from
Thatcham to Marlborough. |
| |
Fortunately, the Romans
had built a road – now the B4000 –
to improve trade with London, and conquer
the Welsh. Roadside settlements sprang up,
and a military outpost was set up at Speen
– though it crossed the Kennet at
Thatcham. |
| |
| No sooner had the Roman empire
started to disintegrate than foreign mercenaries
were called in by native chiefs. As the economy
collapsed, the Saxons were offered land instead
of money. Whether massacred, subjugated, or
intermarried, the Celts were soon dispossessed,
and Berkshire became part of Wessex –
and run by Germans. |
| |
The Kennet Valley remained
a backwater, but still had to see off raiding
Danes in the 10th century, before the Norman
warriors – their army stuffed with
German mercenaries – landed at Hastings,
smashed the English army, and took his army
marauding through Newbury to Wallingford.
Ten weeks after landing, he was made king. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Backwater
to boomtown |
| William the Conqueror rewarded
victory by granting land to all his soldiers,
and one of his bravest and most powerful knights,
Ernulf de Hesdin, was given 48 settlements,
including the hamlet of Ulvritone by the nutrient-rich
river Kennet. |
| |
| In the 1070s, Ernulf’s
local officials divided up narrow plots on
either side of the road crossing the river
– now Northbrook Street – and
rented them to craftsmen and traders. The
‘new burgh’ was a roaring success.
In 20 years, more than 50 plots were taken
up and the population reached 250. Two watermills
sprang up at West Mills to grind corn and
finish cloth, and a church was built. |
| |
| Ernulf grew richer on the back
of Newbury’s success, but carried on
living in Gloucester. He gave most of the
rents to the monks of St Peter in Caen, and
died in 1095. |
| |
| Over the next 100 years, Ernulf’s
descendants were delighted as Newbury doubled
in size to become one of the top 20 towns
in the country. However, this importance ensured
the town became a pawn in the power struggles
of the Middle Ages. |
| |
By 1152, the war of succession
between King Stephen and his half-sister
Matilda saw Stephen embark on a five month
siege of Newbury Castle, held by John Marshall.
Victorian rumours placed this castle on
the Wharf, but it is now thought to have
been a timber keep at Hamstead Marshall. |
| |
| Newbury remained attractive,
and Augustinian monks set up on the old road
to Winchester at Sandleford Priory. After
returning from the crusades, warrior monks
were given land and property where the police
station now stands. Finally, a hospital for
the sick and elderly of the town was set up
by the ailing King John, on the corner of
Newtown Road and Pound Street. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Prosperity
and plague |
The most powerful man of
the day was William Marshall, who saw off
a French invasion of England, and kept everything
running while Henry III grew up. He also
owned prosperous Newbury, which held markets
twice a week, seasonal fairs, and sat on
a busy toll road. |
| |
| Through the 13th century, improvements
were made to the river flow, trade was organised
by merchants’ guilds, and a new road
was built through Speen, connecting London
and Bristol. Cloth and wool sales had made
Newbury the richest town in Berkshire, which
was the fifth richest county in England. |
| |
| But in 1349 the plague struck
in Berkshire, and the town’s standing
crashed. Almost 30% of the town’s wealth
vanished, as periodic outbreaks of Black Death
crippled the economy. |
| |
| Recovery was slow, although
there is evidence of a landgrab by astute
nobles. Donnington Castle was built in 1389
for a medieval squire, but Newbury’s
main advantage lay in its role as a stopover.
The road through Donnington, Newbury and Greenham
was packed with sheep farmers, pilgrims, travelling
artisans, and carts laden with imported wine
going to Oxford. Taverns and inns grew popular. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Rebels,
royalty, and recession |
| Over the next three centuries,
Newbury became a hotbed for anti-establishment
views, starting in 1460 when the town leaders
declared for the Yorkist rebels in the War
of the Roses. The Lancastrian force soon arrived,
looted the shops and hanged the ringleaders. |
| |
| In 1483, local barons gathered
in Newbury to stage a coup – led by
the Duke of Buckingham – to overthrow
Richard III, but were swiftly dealt with.
As Buckingham’s men deserted, he fled
to Salisbury, where he was beheaded. In 1490,
Newbury clothworker Thomas Tyler was arrested
for challenging church beliefs. |
| |
| When Henry VII took the crown
in 1485, the country was in bad shape from
decades of petty wars. However, one of the
few healthy markets was textiles – and
Berkshire wool was noted for its quality.
Newbury was poised to weave its way back into
the record books. |
| |
| Newbury remained cushioned
from recession, and large numbers of men arrived
from across the south to seek work. One of
these was John Smallwood – later Jack
of Newbury – a boy from the Gloucestershire
village of Winchcombe. After securing work
on the looms, his boss died, so he married
his widow, and turned the cottage industry
into a huge export market – building
the world’s first factory in Northbrook
Street. |
| |
As one of the richest men
in England, ‘Jack of Newbury’
grew friendly with Henry VIII, and paid
for a new stone church for the 3,000 Tudor
townsfolk. Trade embargoes were lifted,
opening up other European markets, and still
more labourers arrived in Newbury to train
as weavers. |
| |
| Radicals emerged again in 1556,
when three protestant martyrs were burned
at the stake by Catholic officials of Queen
Mary. Newbury was used to royal visits, and
in 1568 Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was greeted
by ringing bells, though rumour says she had
come to secretly give birth to an illegitimate
son at Hamstead Marshall. |
| |
| On a return visit in 1596,
a charter with new rules for governing the
town was approved, creating officials who
would supervise the town from the Guildhall
in the Market Place. This degree of autonomy
would help the town make quick decisions. |
| |
| By 1625, Newbury’s boom
years were over, and almshouses and charities
were set up to cater for the growing band
of impoverished weavers. Unsurprisingly then,
Charles I’s demands for war taxes did
not go down well, and Newbury’s merchants
joined the growing band calling for Parliament
to intervene. |
| top |
| |
| |
| War
on our doorstep |
| When the civil war broke out,
Charles had the upper hand initially. Returning
from a mauling in the west country in autumn
1643, the main roundhead army was tired and
hungry as it approached the friendly town
of Newbury – where food, horses and
hospitality awaited. But Charles’ cavalry
arrived first, happily seized the supplies,
and formed a line from Wash Common to Speen. |
| |
The stakes were huge. If
Parliament was defeated, the King could
capture London and win the war. Both armies
numbered 14,000, and slugged it out for
12 hours, until both sides were exhausted,
and barely had half their forces intact.
Parliament had used every available man
and was almost beaten. But the king was
alarmed at his own losses and withdrew to
Oxford in the night, leaving the roundheads
to escape. |
| |
| A year later, the tables were
turned. Charles had garrisoned friendly towns
and besieged hostile cities, leaving him with
few troops to defend his base at Oxford. Conversely,
Parliament had trained up new soldiers in
London. As Charles returned from victories
in the west country, he stopped at Newbury
to relieve the garrison at Donnington Castle.
Parliament assumed Charles intended to capture
London, and positioned 19,000 men at Thatcham,
against the King’s 9,000. |
| |
Charles was in a good position,
with the town on his right and castle on
his left, but a traitor gave away his weak
numbers, and the young general Oliver Cromwell
was ordered to flank the royalists via Stockcross.
But Parliament, with no overall commander,
struggled to co-ordinate a battle they should
have won, while the King’s men fought
well on two fronts. Once again in the night
– the king left his guns and supplies
at Donnington Castle – which had been
half-demolished by Parliamentary guns, and
fled to Oxford. The two sides briefly squared
up a month later at Speenhamland, before
retiring to Oxford and London for the winter. |
| |
| After 20 years of war, Britain
and Newbury greeted the restoration of the
monarchy with enthusiasm. In 1663, Charles
II visited the two battlefields, and Newbury’s
clothing guilds put on a parade. Two years
later, plague gripped the town – at
night a horn was sounded as the wagons of
bodies were taken to the open graves on the
downs. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Sackcloth
and coaches |
| The 18th century brought happier
times, helped by Bath’s emergence as
Britain’s first tourist resort. In 1720,
the A4 was turned into a toll road to keep
it in good shape, cutting the journey time
to two days. |
| |
| The number of inns trebled
to 27, and cock-fighting, wrestling and horseracing
all provided the bewigged gentry with gambling
opportunities. The rising industrialists from
London began building country retreats in
the surrounding countryside, and in 1740,
work began to make the river Kennet navigable
for barges. |
| |
| This made sure Newbury was
not just a stopover for partying aristocrats.
Theatre impresario Henry Thornton changed
all that in 1788, when he set up the town’s
first permanent theatre Northcroft Lane –
a squalid area of rat-infested warehouses,
rough pubs and itinerant labourers. |
| |
| Theatres were illegal until
1788, so the venue – on the site of
Temperance Hall – was makeshift, but
in 1802 he moved to the new Gilders theatre,
where the Job Centre now stands. |
| |
| Meanwhile, cargo from London
had had to transfer from boats to wagons at
Reading, but after 1760 Newbury was made the
last stop, bringing in food and drink for
London’s growing population, and spices,
tea and coffee for Newbury and the west country.
Elsewhere, the first town hall was built in
1742, and in 1772, the wooden bridge in Northbrook
Street was replaced by the stone one still
in use today. |
| |
By now, the cloth industry
had moved to Yorkshire and Lancashire, and
Newbury was only making sackcloth and ship
sails, and periodic riots over food prices
confirm that life was still hard for many,
despite the tourism boost. In 1795, reforms
agreed at a pub in Speenhamland –
linking the price of bread to wages –
failed to resolve the problem. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Riots
and sobering reforms |
Local horsemen raised to
see off an expected French invasion spent
most of their time quelling riots in Newbury,
Thatcham and Highclere. The Kennet was turned
into a canal in 1810, and granary barns
sprang up at the Wharf and West Mills. |
| |
| Still, the unrest brought Grenadier
Guards to Newbury in 1830 to round up farm
labourers from Kintbury, rioting against the
introduction of new machinery. National reforms
in 1834 saw a workhouse built to house the
poor at Sandleford. |
| |
| The railway arrived in 1847,
providing fast transport to London, heralding
a period of prolific housebuilding in East
Fields, as the jobless farm workers arrived
in droves, looking for work in the shops,
the new Plenty lifeboat factory, or in domestic
service. A thriving brush-making industry
grew up. |
| |
| Social reformers and benefactors
built schools, a hospital, and ordered the
clearance of slums in the ‘City’
– now the St Johns roundabout area –
amid concern that Newbury was sinking into
drunken decay. |
| |
| By the late 19th century, the
town had 75 pubs – one for every 90
people – so the teetotal Temperance
movement set up a series of coffee shops,
and lobbied magistrates to shut down as many
pubs as possible. Today there are 26. |
| top |
| |
| |
Suburbs
and shopping |
| As the 20th century dawned,
the new middle class built elegant town houses
further away from the squalid town centre,
and the suburb was born. More infrastructure
was put in place – a library, a racecourse,
a new town hall, new sewers – while
clubs and societies were established. Newbury
Show began in 1909. |
| |
| Race day brought hundreds of
visitors roaring through the town in their
motor cars, forcing the Queen Victoria statue
to be moved from the Market Place. Wealthy
landowners would have decorated their house
at Alfred Camps shop, perhaps buying a piano
from Alfonso Cary’s, or snapping up
miracle tonics from self-styled chemists. |
| |
| As with all other English towns,
the two world wars took their toll, but Newbury
had a special place thanks to the requisitioning
of airfields at Greenham, Welford and Aldermaston
in 1940. The American decision to join the
war against Hitler brought thousands of soldiers
and airmen into the town. Elliott’s
furniture factory began making thousands of
glider planes as the allies planned the massive
D-Day assault on occupied France. |
| top |
| |
| |
| Missiles
and mobiles |
| The town’s battles carried
on after VE day, when plans to flood Enborne
to create a reservoir for London were defeated.
As air travel became popular, the government
nearly chose RAF Greenham instead of Gatwick
for a major airport. Newbury also turned down
a chance to become a ‘new town’
to take London’s overspill population
– a request which Swindon and Basingstoke
both accepted. |
| |
| In 1972, the motorway opened
belatedly, and it suddenly became a lot easier
to reach many places in an hour’s drive
from Newbury. Commuting to London became easier,
bringing wealth and business skills to the
town, and laying the foundations for a boom
in technical excellence. |
| |
| Just as this was taking off,
the government announced it would store an
arsenal of 96 nuclear missiles at RAF Greenham.
The Americans arrived to garrison the high-security
airbase, accompanied by thousands of peace
activists, in an issue which divided the town.
Forty thousand peace women ringed the camp,
putting Greenham at the heart of the Cold
War in the 1980s. |
| |
| When the Cold War ended in
1993, the town split once more over the issue
of how to address Newbury’s worsening
traffic problems. A proposed bypass to alleviate
the constant jams would have to pass through
the two civil war battlefields, and some of
Britain’s most heavily protected countryside. |
| |
| Hundreds of environmental campaigners
arrived, setting up blockade camps along the
eight mile route, and adding £25 million
to the bill for the road, which opened in
1998. |
| |
| Ironically, one of the technologies
used by the protesters was the mobile phone,
which was pioneered in Newbury. Vodafone set
up in Newbury in the early 1980s, and the
first mobile phone call in the UK was made
in 1985 between Newbury and London. Today,
it is the biggest employer with 4,000 employees
in the town – at a new £120 million
headquarters on the edge of town. |
| |
| Massive growth and migration
into Newbury on the back of the technological
revolution is seeing the town evolve from
a rural market town into a more sophisticated
centre for business and culture, which Ernulf
de Hesdin would hardly recognise. |
| top |
| |
| |
