Place:Newland, Gloucestershire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Newland is a village in the Forest of Dean District in Gloucestershire, England situated on the east side of the River Wye, 3 miles south-east of Monmouth. It is notable for its parish church of All Saints, known as the 'Cathedral of the Forest'. It was the centre of a large parish with complex boundaries and scattered settlements.

In the 15th and 16th centuries an unofficial market was held at Newland village, the traders taking advantage of the large numbers congregating at the parish church on Sundays and feast days. It probably lapsed during the 17th century when Coleford became a market town. William Jones of Monmouth endowed almshouses in this his home village of Newland. With the growth of Coleford, Newland remained small and mainly residential with two sets of almshouses, a grammar school and, in the mid-18th century, a successful private school.

The parish

Newland parish was created in the early Middle Ages by assarting woodland and waste from the Forest of Dean, and its formation was well under way by the start of the 13th century, when the parish church was built. The main block of the parish was formed by the tithings of Newland, Redbrook (Upper and Lower), Clearwell, and Coleford, but by the 14th century other scattered parcels of land in the Forest were being indiscriminately added to the parish as they became assarted from the Forest waste, which meant that the parish gained a total of 22 detached parts. The largest detached portion of the parish included Bream (which has been redirected to West Dean where it is geographically located). Coleford tithing became a separate civil parish in 1894, but the nearby hamlet of Milkwall remained in Newland. The detached parts were added to other parishes between 1883 and 1935. There is a long discussion of the makeup of the parish, complete with two maps, in the Newland chapter of the Victoria County History of Gloucestershire.

Redbrook, Clearwell, Bream and Milkwall all have articles in Wikipedia and also have excerpts from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 in A Vision of Britain through Time.

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• Volume 5, Chapter 3 of the Victoria County History of Gloucestershire found in the website British History Online expands on the subjects of freemining and foresters throughout the Hundred of St Briavels. The chapter includes maps of the various communities and their relationships to one another. There is an article specifically on Newland.
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county