The station has two main platforms, both with single-storey buildings and canopies, either side of four tracks spanned by a long footbridge. Main entrance building on the Up platform (north, or town side), smaller range including southern entrance on the Down platform, both in free Jacobethan-style. This station is of archetypal GWR style and form for the period. Vaughan mentions similar station designs at Westbury and Aynho Park.

Newbury Station is not designated for the following principal reasons: * Selectivity: common building type for the early C20, standard to GWR at the time; * Date: an early C20 rebuilding of Brunel’s station, of which nothing is known to survive; * Design, engineering and material interest: although the surviving main station buildings are little altered, they are of a standard GWR form and style and lack the higher degree of architectural interest in the composition, detail and quality of construction that can distinguish stations of the period; * Historic interest: late date, with limited connection with Brunel, whose work it replaced; * Group value: despite being mutually visible with the earlier Rockingham Road Bridge other factors highlighted above count against the station's claims to interest.

The railway line from Reading to Newbury, opened in 1847, was the outcome of a dispute between the Great Western Railway and the London and South Western Railway about the provision of a railway to Newbury. The GWR originally proposed to reach the town by a branch from the main line at Pangbourne, but eventually settled on the present route. This was built by a subsidiary company to the GWR, the Berks and Hants Railway. The engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) who, as with the main line, designed the line on the broad gauge. Having previously dismissed the idea of a route to Bristol via Newbury and the Vale of Pewsey he did not regard this as a major project: it only became part of the direct GWR route to Exeter in 1906. It is not known who was the Resident Engineer for the project.

Nothing is known to survive of Brunel's original Newbury station, which opened in 1847 and had an overall roof, although the current Up (north) platform is thought to be in the same location as its predecessor. The goods shed survived until demolished in 1974. With the opening of lines to Southampton and Lambourn, Newbury became an important junction. The present station was constructed in one phase in 1908-10 in association with the upgrade of the Berkshire and Hampshire as a direct route to the South West, providing, for example, through lines for non-stopping West Country expresses.

Photographs from 1910 suggest that since the new station opened, a small building (four by one bays) west of the north entrance building, two signal boxes and platform gas standards have been demolished.

MATERIALS: predominantly red brick in English bond, with limestone and engineering brick dressings. Plain tile roofs. Steel and timber canopies.

DESCRIPTION: north building: a single-storey building in a Free Jacobean style. North façade, single-storey: six bays - two projecting bays - eight bays - two projecting bays - six bays. Red brick in English Bond, with limestone dressings (window cills and lintels) and an engineering brick plinth. Lintels with round corners and hood moulds. Stone string and cill courses. Gables over projecting bays with original wall-mounted gas lamps and finials. Two small entrance canopies, steel framed and glazed, with a modern valance. South (platform) façade (left to right): 13 bays - five bays - nine bays. Central five bays are timber framed with panels and glazing. Some bricked up windows and doors. Attached, a long steel canopy of standard GWR design, with utilitarian riveted steel columns, lattice girders and decorative timber pointed valences. Roof part glazed and part corrugated metal.

Interior: waiting room, café, ticket office, staff mess room. No features of interest. South building: the same Free Jacobean style as the north building. South façade: ten bays, the pair at each end projecting beneath a gable. Red brick in English Bond, with limestone dressings (window cills and lintels) and an engineering brick plinth. Lintels with round corners and hood moulds. Stone string and cill courses. Gables over projecting bays with original wall mounted lamps and finials. North façade: single-storey, ten by two bays. Red brick in English Bond, with limestone dressings (coping, window cills and heads) and an engineering brick plinth. Half hipped roof. Attached, a long steel canopy of standard GWR design, with utilitarian riveted steel columns, lattice girders and decorative timber pointed valences. Roof part glazed and part corrugated metal.

Interior: waiting room and office. No features of interest.

Footbridge: riveted steel walkway, with timber structure over red brick staircases. Limestone cills, lintels, string course and coping. Corrugated metal roof. Walkway windows have been replaced in uPVC. Staircases have possibly original timber handrails and are partially glazed with timber framed windows.

The station is in an urban setting. Rockingham Road Bridge (BHL5333) can be viewed to the west from the platforms.