Closest mines are the Gawton Arsenic Mine, a scheduled ancient monument,[2] Bedford Consolidated Mine and the George and Charlotte Mine.[3] Across the water was Harewood Consolidated Mine. On the eastern high ridge were Tavy Consolidated Mine, East and West Liscombe and Wheal Tamar Copper Mines,[4] and the William and Mary Mine.
As with Morwellham, the whole area is in the south of the highly scattered late 19th century parish of Gulworthy, today a civil parish and a small contributor parish to an ecclesiastical benefice in the Church of England, previously a hamlet of Tavistock.[5][6] The mining families in the community were split between the established church and other sects of Protestantism - the then small town of Bere Alston to the south having had chapels or meeting houses for these in 1887[7] including a Presbyterian Church in 1822.[8]
It to an extent benefited from the short but major engineering feat of the Tavistock Canal, forming a junction with the Tamar at Morwellham quay, completed in June 1817 with a tunnel of 1.75 miles (2.82 km) altogether built at an expense of £68,000 (equivalent to £6,289,000 in 2023) being in engineering and in export of ores a remarkable achievement before its decline in the 1860s.[9][10]
An account of the county in 1818 states "the Tamar is navigable to New Quay...for vessels of about 130 or 140 tons: vessels of fourteen feet draught go up to Morwell-ham quay, six miles from Plymouth" — the first distance appears to be an error.[4]
Since the village was abandoned in the early 20th century it became overgrown and large cut masonry stones from the quay were stolen. In 2008 work was begun to halt New Quay's further destruction: many of the buildings were stabilised and repaired and much of the undergrowth was cut back.