Newbury is situated on the River Kennet, the valley of which forms an important east-west transport route, served by the Kennet and Avon Canal, the Great Western Railway line from London to the West Country and the old A4 road from London to Bristol. The latter road has been replaced as a long distance route by the M4 motorway which here runs parallel five miles to the north.
At Newbury this east-west route is crossed by an equally important north-south route, from the major south coast port of Southampton to the industrial centres of the Midlands. Although this route was once served by a railway route, today it is only served by the A34 road, which today bypasses Newbury to the west on an alignment partially using the old rail route
The town is surrounded on three sides (north, west and south) by the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the downland to the south rises steeply out of the river valley giving good views.
Newbury 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, the First Battle of Newbury in 1643 and the Second Battle of Newbury in 1644. The nearby Donnington Castle was reduced in the aftermath of the second battle.
As well as Vodafone Newbury is also home to the UK headquarters of the pharmaceutical company Bayer AG, Newbury Racecourse, a major course on the British horse-racing calendar, Quantel, Micro Focus, and Genesys Video Conferencing. It also is home to Newbury Building Society which operates in the local region.Newbury benefits from good road links, being close to a junction of the M4 motorway between London and Bristol/South Wales, and the A34 major road between Southampton and the Midlands. Newbury also has two railway stations, Newbury and Newbury Racecourse on the West of England Main Line line between London and the West Country.
