GOLDCLIFF, a parish in the lower division of the
hundred of CALDICOTT, county of MONMOUTH, 4
miles (S.E.) from Newport, , containing 268 inhabitants.
The living is a discharged vicarage, with that of
Nash, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Llandaff, rated
in the king's books at £13. 2. 6., endowed with £200
private benefaction, and £200 royal bounty, and in the
patronage of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College-,
The church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, was
founded and liberally endowed in 1113, by Robert de
Chandos, who, by the desire of Henry I., gave it to the
abbey of Bee, in Normandy, upon which a prior
twelve Black monks were placed here. In 1442,
the suppression of Alien priories, it was made A cell
the abbey of Tewkesbury, and at the dissolution possessed
a revenue of £ 144. 18. 1. The parish is
bounded by the Bristol channel on the south, at
which point the cliff, whence its name is derived,
rises abruptly from the extremity of a marshy flat, to a
height of about one hundred feet above the level of the
sea; it is a single rock consisting of horizontal strata
of limestone, under which is a body of hard brown
grit, full of yellow mica.