Newport, Monmouthshire Genealogy

Guide to Newport (Casnewydd) history, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.



History
Newport (Welsh: Casnewydd)  is a cathedral and university city and unitary authority area in south east Wales. It is located on the River Usk close to its confluence with the Severn Estuary, approximately 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Cardiff. At the 2011 census it was listed as the third largest city in Wales, with a city population of 145,700 and an urban population of 306,844.

Bronze Age fishermen settled around the fertile estuary of the River Usk and later the Celtic Silures built hillforts overlooking it. In AD 75, on the very edge of their empire, the Roman legions built a Roman fort at Caerleon to defend the river crossing. According to legend, in the late 5th century Saint Woolos church was founded by Saint Gwynllyw, the patron saint of Newport and King of Gwynllwg. The church was certainly in existence by the 9th century and today has become Newport Cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Monmouth. The Normans arrived from around 1088–1093 to build the first Newport Castle and river crossing downstream from Caerleon and the first Norman Lord of Newport was Robert Fitzhamon.

The settlement of 'Newport' is first mentioned as novo burgus established by Robert, Earl of Gloucester in 1126. The name was derived from the original Latin name Novus Burgus, meaning new borough or new town. The city can sometimes be found labelled as Newport-on-Usk on old maps.

The original Newport Castle was a small motte-and-bailey castle in the park opposite Newport Cathedral. It was buried in rubble excavated from the Hillfield railway tunnels that were dug under Stow Hill in the 1840s and no part of it is currently visible. Around the settlement, the new town grew to become Newport, obtaining its first charter in 1314 and was granted a second one, by Hugh Stafford, 2nd Earl of Stafford in 1385. In the 14th century friars came to Newport where they built an isolation hospital for infectious diseases. After its closure the hospital lived on in the place name "Spitty Fields" (a corruption of ysbyty, the Welsh for hospital). "Austin Friars" also remains a street name in the city.

A third charter, establishing the right of the town to run its own market and commerce came from Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham in 1426. By 1521, Newport was described as having "....a good haven coming into it, well occupied with small crays [merchant ships] where a very great ship may resort and have good harbor." Trade was thriving with the nearby ports of Bristol and Bridgwater and industries included leather tanning, soap making and starch making. The town's craftsmen included bakers, butchers, brewers, carpenters and blacksmiths. A further charter was granted by James I in 1623.

As the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain in the 19th century, the South Wales Valleys became key suppliers of coal from the South Wales Coalfield, and iron. These were transported down local rivers and the new canals to ports such as Newport, and Newport Docks grew rapidly as a result. Newport became one of the largest towns in Wales and the focus for the new industrial eastern valleys of South Wales. By 1830 Newport was Wales' leading coal port, and until the 1850s it was larger than Cardiff.

Newport probably had a Welsh-speaking majority until the 1830s, but with a large influx of migrants from England and Ireland over the following decades, the town and the rest of Monmouthshire came to be seen as "un-Welsh", a view compounded by ambiguity about the status of Monmouthshire.

The late 19th and early 20th century period was a boom time for Newport. The Alexandra Docks opened in 1875. The population was expanding rapidly and the town became a county borough in 1891. In 1892 the Alexandra South Dock was opened and was the largest masonry dock in the world. Although coal exports from Newport were by now modest compared to the Port of Cardiff (which included Cardiff, Penarth and Barry), Newport was the place where the Miners' Federation of Great Britain was founded in 1889, and international trade was sufficiently large for 8 consuls and 14 vice-consuls to be based in the town.

From 1893 the town was served by the paddle steamers of P & A Campbell Ltd. (the "White Funnel Line"), which was based in Bristol. The company had been originally set up, by the Scottish brothers Alex and Peter Campbell, on the River Clyde, but was re-located to the Severn Estuary. Departing steamers would face south on Davis Wharf, with the Art College to its left and the town bridge behind. The boats gave rise to the name of the short street which led to the quayside - Screwpacket Road. By 1955 steamers had stopped calling at Newport and P&A Campbell went into receivership in 1959. It was taken over by the firm which would become the Townsend Ferry group.

Compared to many Welsh towns, Newport's economy had a broad base, with foundries, engineering works, a cattle market and shops that served much of Monmouthshire. The post-war years saw renewed prosperity, with Saint Woolos Cathedral (now Newport Cathedral) attaining full cathedral status in 1949, the opening of the modern integrated Llanwern steelworks in 1962, and the construction of the Severn Bridge and local sections of the M4 motorway in the late 1960s, making Newport the best-connected place in Wales.

Although employment at Llanwern steelworks declined in the 1980s, the town acquired a range of new public sector employers, and a Richard Rogers-designed Inmos microprocessor factory helped to establish Newport as being extant for technology companies. A flourishing local music scene in the early 1990s led to claims that the town was "a new Seattle".

The county borough of Newport was granted city status in 2002 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. In the same year, an unusually large merchant ship, referred to locally as the Newport Ship, was uncovered and rescued from the west bank of the River Usk during the construction of the Riverfront Arts Center. The ship has been dated to some time between 1445 and 1469 and it remains the only vessel of its type from this period yet discovered anywhere in the world.

Cemeteries (Civil)
St Woolos Cemetery 48 Bassaleg Rd Newport NP20 3PY Phone: +44 1633 263864

Caerleon Cemetery Cold Bath Road Caerleon NP18 1NF

Christchurch Cemetery The Lodge, Caerleon Newport NP18 1JJ Phone: +44 1633 263864

Parishes
St Woolas Cathedral 103 Stow Hill Newport NP20 4EA Phone: +44 7933 627594

Holy Trinity in Wales Christchurch Rd Caerleon, Newport NP18 1JJ Phone: +44 1633 420701

All Saints Church 66-100 Brynglas Rd Newport NP20 5RY Phone: +44 1633 556583

Saint Anne's Church Church Cl Rogerstone, Newport NP10 9SH

Duffryn Community Church *19 Jamaica Cir Duffryn, Newport NP10 Phone: +44 1633 816326

St Paul's Church 9 Bridge St Newport NP20 Phone: +44 1633 266076

St Mary's Church Malpas Vicarage Malpas Rd, Newport NP20 6GQ Phone: +44 1633 852828

St Peter's Church 7AS Cwmbran NP44

St Peter, Llandevaud Newport NP18 2AA Phone: +44 7722 500805

'St Gabriel's Church Clomendy Rd Cwmbran NP44 3LR Phone: +44 1633 489718

St Julius' and St Aaron's Church 41 St Julian's Ave Newport NP19 7JT Phone: +44 1633 258046

St Cadoc's Church The Vicarage/High St Newport NP18 1AZ Phone: +44 1633 421248

The Bishop of Monmouth's Office Bishopstow Stow Hill Newport NP20 4EA Phone: +44 1633 263510

To find the addresses of parishes in adjacent towns and villages, connect with the following website

Non Conformists
Other Christian groups follow:


 * Baptists
 * Church of Christ
 * Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
 * Emmanuel EvangelicaL
 * Iglesia ni Christo (Philippines)
 * Jehovah's Witnesses
 * Kingdom Life
 * Methodist
 * Mountjoy Christian Fellowship
 * Newport City Church
 * Presbyterian
 * Roman Catholic
 * Salvation Army
 * Seventh Day Adventists

Non Christian faiths include the following:


 * Buddhist
 * Hindu
 * Jewish
 * Muslim

Civil Registration

 * ukbmdorg: Monmouthsire records
 * bmd-certificates: Newport
 * Newport City Council Registry Service

Local Histories

 * Newportpast: Newport History
 * localhistories: Newport
 * The Newport Experiment by Rockwell Stensrud
 * Newport Through Time by Jan Preece

Maps and Gazetteers

 * google maps: Newport
 * streetmapof Newport
 * newportpast: old maps of Newport
 * genuki Newport gazetteer
 * Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales: Newport

Newspapers
Newport does not have an independent newspaper. Local newspapers follow:


 * The South Wales Argus
 * Digital Newspaper: Wales on Line

Occupations
Newport's Travel to Work Area incorporates much of south Monmouthshire; the new 2001-based area also includes Cwmbran. The city itself has three major centers for employment: the city center, and business parks clustered around the M4 motorway junctions 24 in the east and 28 in the west.

Organizations based in the city include Airbus Defence & Space; the headquarters of the Office for National Statistics; the headquarters of the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (formerly known as the Patent Office); the General Insurance Division of Lloyds TSB; a large Panasonic manufacturing plant; a manufacturing plant for International Rectifier; the headquarters of insurance comparison site Gocompare; the headquarters of Wales and West Utilities; the shared-service center for HM Prison Service; the Passport Office for much of the south and west of the UK; and the Wales headquarters of the Charity Commission and British Red Cross. In 2014 Admiral Insurance opened a large newly constructed office opposite Newport railway station.

At the mouth of the River Usk, the Sims Metal Management plant hosts the world's largest industrial shredder for scrap metal with access by road, rail and sea. The plant also houses the world's largest car crusher.

Many smaller companies are located in the area, acting as materials and parts sources for the larger companies. Examples of such as companies would be Zodiac Aerospace (serving Airbus), UK Intellectual Property Ltd., serving most local groups.

Societies

 * Newport, Gwent Family History Society
 * Wales local history society: Gwent
 * Open Lectures.com: Newport Local History

Archives

 * Gwent Archives
 * Newport City, Wales, digital archives
 * The National Archives, Newport Library

Websites

 * Newport City Council
 * Monmouthshire County Council
 * wikipedia: Newport Wales