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,
St Mary Magdalene church and 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, Newark, close to the Fosse Way and the River Trent. There cremated remains were buried 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. 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." 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 River 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, and 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 (siege piece) made from silver plate in the siege In the
English Civil War, it was besieged by
Parliamentary forces and
relieved by
Royalist forces under
Prince Rupert. In the English Civil War, Newark was a Royalist stronghold, 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 close to the river, with defensive walls and a water-filled ditch of 2¼ miles 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 , completed in 1776 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 the 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). J. S. Baxter, a schoolboy in Newark in 1830–1840, contributed to
The Hungry Forties: Life under the Bread Tax (London, 1904), a book about 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 buildings included the Independent Chapel (1822), Holy Trinity (1836–1837),
Christ Church (1837),
Castle Railway Station (1846), the Wesleyan Chapel (1846), the
Corn Exchange (1848), the Methodist New Connexion Chapel (1848), W. N. Nicholson Trent Ironworks (1840s),
Northgate Railway Station (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 front of it 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, ex-President of the Polish Republic and head of the wartime Polish government in London, 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. at
Newark Air Museum The main industries in Newark in the last hundred years have been clothing, bearings, pumps, agricultural machinery and pine furniture, and 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-and-Richardsons. ==Population==