First Battle of Newbury remembered 381 years on
Commemorations were paid last week to those lost at the First Battle of Newbury 381 years ago.
Newbury re-enactors Martin Clayton and Jacques le Roux gather at dusk each year without fail to remember one of the longest battles of the English Civil War, which claimed up to 10,000 lives.
And this year was no exception. The anniversary fell on Friday, September 20.
The pair, joined by a small procession, marched in period uniform with pikes and other props to the site where the Royalist and Parliamentary armies under the personal command of King Charles I and the Earl of Essex clashed.
They stood at the spot where the Royalist Lord Falkland was killed, in Dark Lane, opposite Round Hill, Wash common.
“We all love local history and it so important to let people know what happened in the land they are stood on,” said Mr Clayton.
After a short address by Newbury historian David Stubbs, the crowd observed a minute silence to pay their respects to the lives lost.
Mr Stubbs said: “These momentous events happened here on our fields, the fields of Newbury and Wash Common.
“They really could slip into oblivion if people don’t think about what happened here in the past.”
The Royalist forces cut off the Parliamentary army on its retreat to London after besieging Gloucester.
Parliamentarians managed to outmanoeuvre the Royalists and forced the fighting into a largely enclosed landscape, where both sides suffered heavy causalities.
The Royalists failure to break the Parliamentary army is considered a major turning point in the war.
But had they succeeded, the future could have looked very different, as Mr Stubbs explained:
“We might not live in the parliamentary democracy that we do today if what happened had turned out slightly differently.
“We would live in a very different country today.
“It was one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the English Civil War.
“When you walk these fields and pass the road names of Wash Common, those are memories are all around us and we carry that to the future so our young people know what happened on the land where they live and go to school.”
