Newport History

Newport, now a suburb of and included in the town of Barnstaple March 25th, 1885, is also within the municipal borough; it was, in the reign of Henry VI. a borough of itself with a Mayor and Corporation, but this distinction has long been extinct; it now constitutes an ecclesiastical parish, formed July 2, 1847, from the civil parish of Bishop’s Tawton.

Kelly's Directory of Devon (1902)