New'bury, a thriving market-town of Berkshire, on the 'swift' Kennet, 17 miles W. by S. of Reading and 55 from London. Its gray old church, restored in 1867 at a cost of £15,000, is a fine Perpendicular edifice, with a noble tower added in 1510 by John Winchcombe or Small-woode, otherwise 'Jack of Newbury,' a famous clothier, who sent a hundred of his own men to fight at Flodden. The large Italian corn exchange was built in 1862, in which year was started a great yearly wool-market; and still more recent are the handsome municipal offices and the new grammar-school, though this claims King John for its founder (1216). Newbury - 'new' only as distinguished from the old Roman station of Spinœ (now Speen) - besides has many ancient and wealthy charities. It was incorporated by Elizabeth in 1596, and the borough boundary was extended in 1878. Pop. (1801) 4275; (1851) 6574; (1901) 11,061. Two hard-fought battles took place here in the Great Rebellion - the one between Charles and Essex, on 20th September 1643; the other between Charles and Manchester, on 27th October 1644. The advantage of the first was, on the whole, on the side of the king, but it cost the lives of Lords Falkland, Carnarvon, and Sunderland, to whom a memorial was erected in 1878. The second would have been a decisive royalist defeat but for Manchester's hesitancy.

See the History of Newbury (1839), a work on the two battles by W. Money (1881), and his History of Newbury (Oxford, 1887).