Newbury, United Kingdom

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 30 feet (9 metres) in length and 20 ft (6 m) 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 25 kilometres (15+1⁄2 mi) to the north it brought no advantage to the town. Newbury had to wait until 1847 to join the railway network, with the opening of the Berks and Hants Railway branch line from Reading to Hungerford 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.

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.