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Newbury is the principal town in the west of Berkshire, England and has its own civil parish (led by a town council) as well as the administrative headquarters of West Berkshire. It spans both sides of the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal, and has a town centre containing many 17th century buildings. Newbury has a racecourse and the headquarters of Vodafone UK and of Entprise Software company Micro Focus International. The town is approximately south-central in West Berkshire and has several of its hotels. To Newbury's north and west is the eastern stretch, the Berkshire Downs, of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the part-ruined Donnington Castle and racehorse training (centred on Lambourn). To the south is the 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, Reading and Slough. Together with the adjacent town of Thatcham, Newbury forms the principal part of an Urban Area of just under 70,000 people.〔http://www.citypopulation.de/UK-EnglandUA.html〕 == 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., ISBN 1-874350-34-5 ;〕 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 Survey 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.〔(Royal Berkshire History: Kings John & Henry III in Newbury )〕 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 half way 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. The opening of the Great Western Railway to the north of Newbury effectively killed the coaching trade. Having been approximately midway on the Bath Road from London, Newbury became something of a backwater market town, with an economy based largely on agriculture and horse-racing. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Newbury, Berkshire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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