Newland village is set on the western side of the Royal Forest of Dean. The name Nova Terra or New Land commonly referred to the clearings made in the forest for new cultivation, incursions into the large tracts of land owned by the Crown which valued the area for the minerals, food supply and timber and provided the king with his major occupation: the recreation of the hunt.
These clearings were achieved as much by stealth as by official processes, but with King John in financial distress, he ordered his chief forester, Hugh de Neville, "to make our profit by selling woods and demising assarts". Licensed scattered settlements emerged at Highmeadow, Ashridge, Redbrook and Clearwell, and most significantly for Newland, one called 'Welinton" ("the farmstead by the willows" - "Spout Farm") where a moated "manor house" was later built and which survived until the 18th Century.
Visitors to the "Cathedral of the Forest" often ask why such a large church in such a small village?
From the start Crown and Court shaped the history of Newland and, as the name suggests, NEW land is a late development. Neighbouring villages Staunton and St. Briavels were well established with fine stone Romanesque churches long before Robert of Wakering built a church on the hillside above the Blackbrook and Redbrook valleys in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The essential factor for these hamlets was the swathe of newly available wide fertile fields that stretched from Highmeadow around the hillsides down to the Valley Brook, and these were the Nova Terra, the new lands.
Early rectors were royal appointees, as the office was a royal plum bestowed on men of substance - William Gifford, for example, was later Archbishop of York.
The Newland tithe barn was raided, forest clergy hampered and harassed and the Bishop's men were themselves in turn summoned to court - However, the King's will prevailed. No doubt the chantry altar dedicated to King Edward's service in the church heard fulsome and grateful prayer, and there is no doubt that these enrichments provided the means to rebuild the church to its present large dimensions.
There was an aura of prosperity at Churchend from the very start which was initially derived from agriculture and iron ore; it was later compounded with coal, tanning and even shipping. Wealthy family estates developed about the Nova Terra and their patronage nurtured the development of the village. Robert and Joan Greyndour founded and endowed a valued chantry school (15th Century), then after the reformation an ex-pupil, Edward Bell, re-endowed the village with a Grammar School.
The village prospered throughout the Middle Ages; archives provide us with names of the early inhabitants and it impresses how many topographical names current until the last century go back to those mediaeval residents. From the 15th Century an unofficial market was set up in the churchyard, seizing the opportunity presented by large congregations gathered there on feast days. The clergy protested that the butchers sold their meat during the service. Court records tell of a community where a wife was sold for sixpence in a pub, a couple were burnt as witches, and a successful case was prosecuted against a woman who had slandered a ghost.
The village as we now see it came into focus in the 18th Century and is often described as "like a cathedral close". It was transformed by the Probyn family whose prestige was established when Edmund Probyn was knighted and later made Chief Baron of the Exchequer. From the late 17th Century onwards the Probyn family rebuilt at Spout Farm, the Ostrich, the old village shop, the Dark (Dower) House and probably the Tan House.
