Speen

Newbury's western neighbour is Speen, a residential village that may stand on the site of the Roman settlement of Spinae.

The Bath Road runs through the village and as early as the 17th and 18th centuries Speen had become popular as a place in which to live. Houses from that period still bear evidence to this, such as Speen Lodge and Speen Manor, the 18th century Elmore House and, on a grander scale, Benham Park (1 mile to the west). This dates from 1775 and was designed for the Earl of Craven by Henry Holland and Capability Brown who also laid out the gardens.

The house rises to three storeys and has an impressive Ionic portico and fine ornamented ceilings to its main rooms. Newer houses now fill the spaces between the older houses but the standard of elegance is maintained and Speen is still a 'highly desirable' area.

In a lane to the south of the Bath road is the church, partly of the 14th century but mostly rebuilt in the 1860s and 70s. It keeps the sounding board of its Jacobean pulpit (the rest is at a church in Wiltshire), has some fragments of medieval glass and many interesting monuments including the l6th century tomb of Jean Baptiste Castillion of Piedmont to whom