NEW PASSAGE, a place in the S W of Gloucestershire; on the river Severn, 10 miles N N W of Bristol. It is on the line of the Bristol and South Wales Union railway; and it has a station on the railway, and is the point of communication across the Severn, which has here a width of about 2¼ miles. A ferry existed here from time immemorial; was the line of Charles I.'s escape, after leaving Raglan; was suppressed by Cromwell, on account of treachery by the boatmen to a party of republican soldiers who were pursuing the king; and was not used again till 1747.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))