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. But while the name was adopted for the parish, the village that evolved around the church was known for centuries as “Churchend.” The church builder, Robert of Wakering, King John’s “beloved clerk” was the trusted agent of Hugh de Neville. The church probably reflected his master’s policy, who substantially improved the castle at St Briavels, the administrative centre for the Constable of the forest, and a manor was created in Newland to be held with the castle as part of a royal estate.

Early rectors were royal appointees, as though the office was a royal plum bestowed on men of substance. William Gifford, for example, was later Archbishop of York. King Edward 1’s favours caused dismay when he granted the rector, John of London, a sudden bounty of tithe revenue charged on 2000 acres of ascertained illegal assarts from various forest parishes, but dismay turned to outrage when Edward then transferred the church in total, with all its revenues to the Bishop of Llandaff in 1305. The Newland tithe barn was raided, forest clergy hampered and harassed. The Bishop’s men and were in turn, themselves, 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.

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 inform of a community where a wife was sold for sixpence in a pub, a couple was burnt as witches, and a successful case was prosecuted against a woman who had slandered a ghost.The village, as seen now, came into focus in the 18th Century, often described as “like a cathedral close”. It was transformed by the Probyn family whose prestige was established when Edmund Probyn was knighted then 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. The village was radically transformed when they cleared the hillside south west of the church, of lanes and cottages to build the 18th Century mansion and garden outlook, (Newland House, later sadly altered.) At that time Newland was published as “one of finest villages in county” and inhabitants and visitors alike standing in the huge churchyard agree that remarkably little has happened since to dispel that view.