Newark-on-Trent () or Newark is a market town and civil parish in the Newark and Sherwood district, in Nottinghamshire, England. It lies on the river Trent and was historically a major inland port. The A1 road bypasses the town on the line of the ancient Great North Road. The population of the parish was recorded at 30,345 at the 2021 census.
Newark has a marketplace lined with many historical buildings and one of its most notable landmarks is St Mary Magdalene church with its towering spire at high and the highest structure in the town. The church is the tallest church building in Nottinghamshire and can be seen when entering the town or bypassing it.
Toponymy The place-name Newark is first attested in the cartulary of Eynsham Abbey in Oxfordshire, where it appears as "Newercha" in about 1054–1057 and "Niweweorche" in about 1075–1092. It appears as "Newerche" in the 1086 Domesday Book. The name "New werk" has the apparent meaning of "New fort".
History The town's origins are likely to be Roman, as it lies on a major Roman road, the Fosse Way. It grew up around Newark Castle and St Mary Magdalene church; it was later developed as a centre for the wool and cloth trades.
Early history The origins of the town are possibly Roman, from its position on an important Roman road, the Fosse Way. In a document which purports to be a charter of 664 AD, Newark is mentioned as having been granted to the Abbey of Peterborough by King Wulfhere of Mercia. An Anglo-Saxon pagan cemetery used from the early fifth to early seventh centuries has been found in Millgate, close to the Fosse Way and the river Trent; cremated remains were buried there in pottery urns.
In the reign of Edward the Confessor, Newark belonged to Godiva and her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who granted it to Stow Minster in 1055. After the Norman Conquest, Stow Minster retained the revenues of Newark, but it came under the control of the Norman Bishop Remigius de Fécamp, after whose death control passed to the Bishops of Lincoln from 1092 until the reign of Edward VI. There were burgesses in Newark at the time of the Domesday survey. The reign of Edward III shows evidence that it had long been a borough by prescription. The Newark wapentake (hundred) in the east of Nottinghamshire was established in the period of Anglo-Saxon rule (10th–11th centuries).
Medieval to Stuart period
Newark Castle was originally a fortified manor house founded by the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder. In 1073, Remigius de Fécamp, Bishop of Lincoln, put up an earthwork motte-and-bailey fortress on the site. The river bridge was built about this time under a charter from Henry I, as was St Leonard's Hospital. The bishopric also gained from the king a charter to hold a five-day fair at the castle each year, and under King Stephen to establish a mint. King John died of dysentery in Newark Castle in 1216.Brown, Cornelius; A History of Nottinghamshire (1896) Retrieved 28 April 2023
The town became a local centre for the wool and cloth trade – by the time of Henry II a major market was held there. Wednesday and Saturday markets in the town were founded in the period 1156–1329, under a series of charters from the Bishop of Lincoln. After his death, Henry III tried to bring order to the country, but the mercenary Robert de Gaugy refused to yield Newark Castle to the Bishop of Lincoln, its rightful owner. This led to the Dauphin of France (later King Louis VIII of France) laying an eight-day siege on behalf of the king, ended by an agreement to pay the mercenary to leave. Around the time of Edward III's death in 1377, "Poll tax records show an adult population of 1,178, excluding beggars and clergy, making Newark one of the largest 25 or so towns in England."Newark Future, 2008
In 1457, a flood swept away the bridge over the Trent. Although there was no legal requirement to do so, the Bishop of Lincoln, John Chadworth, funded a new bridge of oak with stone defensive towers at either end. In January 1571 or 1572, the composer Robert Parsons fell into the swollen Trent at Newark and drowned.
After the break with Rome in the 16th century, the establishment of the Church of England, and the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII had the Vicar of Newark, Henry Lytherland, executed for refusing to acknowledge the King as head of the Church. The dissolution affected Newark's political landscape. Even more radical changes came in 1547, when the Bishop of Lincoln exchanged ownership of the town with the Crown. Newark was incorporated under an alderman and twelve assistants in 1549; the charter was confirmed and extended by Elizabeth I.
Charles I reincorporated the town under a mayor and aldermen, owing to its increasing commercial prosperity. This charter, except for a temporary surrender under James II, continued to govern the corporation until the Municipal Corporations Act 1835.
The Civil War
In the English Civil War, it was besieged by Parliamentary forces and relieved by Royalist forces under Prince Rupert. Newark was a Royalist stronghold, with Charles I having raised his standard in nearby Nottingham. "Newark was besieged on three occasions and finally surrendered only when ordered to do so by the King after his own surrender." It was attacked in February 1643 by two troops of horsemen, but beat them back. The town fielded at times as many as 600 soldiers and raided Nottingham, Grantham, Northampton, Gainsborough and other places with mixed success, but enough to cause it to rise to national notice. In 1644, Newark was besieged by forces from Nottingham, Lincoln and Derby, until relieved in March by Prince Rupert.
Parliament commenced a new siege towards the end of January 1645 after more raiding, but this was relieved about a month later by Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Newark cavalry fought with the king's forces, which were decisively defeated in the Battle of Naseby, near Leicester, in June 1645.
The final siege began in November 1645, by which time the town's defences had been much strengthened. Two major forts had been built just outside the town, one called the Queen's Sconce to the south-west, and another, the King's Sconce, to the north-east; both were close to the river, with defensive walls and a water-filled ditch of around the town. The King's May 1646 order to surrender was only accepted under protest by the town's garrison. After that, much of the defences was destroyed, including the castle, which was left in essentially the state it can be seen today. The Queen's Sconce was left largely untouched; its remains are in Sconce and Devon Park.
Georgian era and early 19th century
In about 1770, the Great North Road around Newark (now the A616) was raised on a long series of arches to ensure it remained clear of the regular floods. A special Act of Parliament in 1773 allowed the creation of a town hall next to Market Place. Designed by John Carr of York and completed in 1776, Newark Town Hall is now a Grade I listed building, housing a museum and art gallery. In 1775, the Duke of Newcastle, at the time the Lord of the Manor and a major landowner in the area, built a new brick bridge with stone facing to replace a dilapidated one next to the castle. This is still one of the town's major thoroughfares today.
A noted 18th-century advocate of reform in Newark was the printer and newspaper owner, Daniel Holt (1766–1799). He was imprisoned for printing a leaflet advocating parliamentary reform and for selling a pamphlet by Thomas Paine.
In a milieu of parliamentary reform, the Duke of Newcastle evicted over a hundred Newark tenants whom he believed to support directly or indirectly at the 1829 elections the Liberal/Radical candidate (Wilde), rather than his candidate, Michael Sadler, a progressive Conservative.
A schoolboy in 1830–1840 contributed to a book on the Corn Laws: "Chartists and rioters came from Nottingham into Newark, parading the streets with penny loaves dripped in blood carried on pikes, crying Bread or blood."
19th–21st centuries
Many buildings and much industry appeared in the Victorian era; the former included the Independent Chapel (1822), Holy Trinity (1836–1837), Christ Church (1837), (1846), the Wesleyan Chapel (1846), the Corn Exchange (1848), the Methodist New Connexion Chapel (1848), W. N. Nicholson Trent Ironworks (1840s), (1851), North End Wesleyan Chapel (1868), St Leonard's Anglican Church (1873), the Baptist Chapel (1876), the Primitive Methodist Chapel (1878), Newark Hospital (1881), Ossington Coffee Palace (1882), Gilstrap Free Library (1883), the Market Hall (1884), the Unitarian Chapel (1884), the Fire Station (1889), the Waterworks (1898), and the School of Science and Art (1900).
The Ossington Coffee Palace was built by Lady Charlotte Ossington, daughter of the 4th Duke of Portland and widow of a former Speaker of the House of Commons, Viscount Ossington. It was designed to be a Temperance alternative to pubs and coaching inns.
These changes and industrial growth raised the population from under 7,000 in 1800 to over 15,000 by the end of the century. The Sherwood Avenue Drill Hall opened in 1914, as the First World War began.
In the Second World War, there were several RAF stations within a few miles of Newark, many holding squadrons of the Polish Air Force. A plot was set aside in Newark Cemetery for RAF burials. This is now the war graves plot, where all but ten of the 90 Commonwealth and all of the 397 Polish burials were made. The cemetery also has 49 scattered burials from the First World War. A memorial cross to the Polish airmen buried there was unveiled in 1941 by President Raczkiewicz of the Polish Republic and head of the wartime Polish government in London; they were supported by Władysław Sikorski, head of the Polish Armed Forces in the West and prime minister of the Polish Government in Exile in 1939–1943. When the two died, Sikorski in 1943 and Raczkiewicz in 1947, they were buried at the foot of the monument. Sikorski's remains were returned to Poland in 1993, but his former grave in Newark remained as a monument.
In 2025, Newark city council returned Sikorski's tombstone to Poland. RAF Winthorpe was opened in 1940 and declared inactive in 1959. The site is now the location of the Newark Air Museum.
The main industries in Newark in the last hundred years have been clothing, bearings, pumps, agricultural machinery and pine furniture, along with the refining of sugar. British Sugar still has one of its sugar beet processing factories to the north of the town, near the A616 (Great North Road). There have been several factory closures especially since the 1950s. The breweries that closed in the 20th century included James Hole and Warwicks & Richardsons.
Population Newark had a population of 30,345 at the 2021 census, a 10% increase from the 27,700 of the 2011 census. The ONS Mid Year Population Estimates for 2007 indicated that the population had risen to some 26,700.The Town of Newark-on-Trent , Lincoln College. The Office for National Statistics also identifies a wider Newark-on-Trent built up area with a 2011 census population of 43,363 and an area subdivision with a population of 37,084. In the 2011 census, 77% of adults in the town were employed.
Geography
By road, Newark is from Nottingham, from Lincoln and from Leicester. Locally, the town lies from Bingham, from Grantham, from Mansfield, from Retford, from Sleaford and from Southwell.
Newark lies on the bank of the river Trent, with the river Devon running as a tributary through the town. Standing at the intersection of the Great North Road and the Fosse Way, Newark originally grew around the castle, now ruined, and a large market place now lined with historic buildings. It forms a single built-up area with the neighbouring parish of Balderton to the south-east; Farndon lies to the south, on the A46 road, and Winthorpe is to the north.