Newport

"NEWPORT, a parish (formerly a market-town) in the hundred of UTTLESFORD, county of ESSEX, 3½ miles (S. S. W.) from Saffron-Walden, containing 852 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the jurisdiction of the Commissary of Essex and Herts, concurrently with the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of London, rated in the king's books at £9. 10., endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £200 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Crown. The church, dedicated to St. Mary, is a fine structure in the later English style, having a lofty western tower, crowned with embattled turrets. There is a place of worship for Independents. A free grammar school was founded in 1586, by Joyce Frankland and William Saxie, her son, who endowed it with a rent-charge and other property, now producing together an annual income of about £200. At the northern end of the village are slight remains of an hospital, founded, in the reign of John, by Richard de Newport, the revenue of which, at the dissolution, was £23. 10. 8. Two fairs are held, on Easter-Tuesday and November 17th, but the market has been long disused." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]