This cache is located in a prominent Town Centre area so will require some amount of stealth to retrieve and replace un-noticed. You will need a pen/pencil with you as the cache does not contain one. The difficulty rating notes the busy highly visible location and cache recovery / replacement problems you will encounter.
Newport was a planned 'new town' from the time of Norman rule, designed around a simple elongated 'S' shape street with a widened centre to provide an 'island' site for the erection of the Church of St Nicholas.
Situated near to the manor of Edgmond, the locale had an important inland fishing industry hence the 'Three Fishes' in the town crest, and also served as a 'travellers rest' and market centre for much of the surrounding Shropshire and Staffordshire farming communities.
Previously known as Nova Burga or Newborough, the town received it first charter from King Henry I. In 1227 Henry III granted the realms of Edgmond and Nova Burga to Henry De Audley for the princely sum of 'One Yeary Sparrowhawk to The Exchequor' !!
Much of the town was detroyed in the 'Great Fire of 1665' which left 162 families homeless and most of the town in ruins. Only two significant buildings survived the fire and they are there to this day; Smallwood Lodge and The Guildhall.
You are now stood in St Mary's Street, a narrow thoroughfare which still retains its cobblestoned appearance. If you stand with your back to the road and church (facing the buildings), to your right a little further along the road is OZZY'S WINE BAR. We could not claim this location to be of major historical importance, but in the realms of recent celebrity culture it is worthy of note ...
As the plaque on the building informs you, this premises used to be owned by Ozzy Osbourne, 'The Prince of Darkness', lead vocalist with Black Sabbath (for those of you of the MTV generation yes he did exist before the docu-soap).
Ozzy used to live at Ranton Green near Gnosall, just a few miles from Newport when married to his first wife Thelma and before Sharon and the bright lights of Hollywood came calling.
To your left, at the lower end of St Mary's Street can be found the Royal Victoria Hotel. Built in 1830, this impressive double-fronted Georgian period building was originally call The Union Hotel. Built of the site of the Bear Inn, local people subscribed to the building project of the new Union, and this was to be the principal hotel in the town, which was built with the fashionable five bays and two and a half storeys surmounted by a very shallow pediment of the period.
In 1832, the then Princess Victoria officially opened the hotel during part of a national tour of the country prior to becoming Queen. Victoria gifted the hotel with a pair of tortoise shells to commemorate the opening and bequeathed that from that point forward, the hotel should be known as 'The Royal Victoria'.
Looking back across St Mary's Street, past the lower entrance to St Nicholas' Church and across the lower end of the High Street lies the grand entrance to Adams Grammar School.
Founded in 1656 by William Adams, a local boy who made his fortune as a haberdasher in London, Adams Grammar has grown to be one o the foremost and successful boys garmmar schools in the country, with a mixture of day students and boarders, and in latter years, permitting girls into the sixth form.
After William Adams death in 1660, the governance of the school was taken on by The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. Adams also provided the funds for the building of a market hall in the town. At each side of the entrance gates to the school on the High Street are a pair of Alms houses, also provided by Adams to provide accommodation for less fortunate people in the town.