St Newlyn East is a former lead mining village in central Cornwall, 3 miles S of Newquay (and a long way from Newlyn, with which it should not be confused). The church of St Newlina is in the village centre, and is built of killas, a local sedimentary rock that has been metamorphosed by the intruded granite. It consists of a W tower, a nave with a N transept, and a 6-bay S aisle with a transeptal chapel, and a 2-storey S porch. The chancel is of 2 bays, but there is no chancel arch. The lower parts of the N transept walls and more than half its E wall are of 12thc. masonry, and the window in its W wall is probably a re-used Norman one, though widened and with new jambs (Sedding). There is also Norman masonry in the chancel, according to Pevsner. The earliest fabric is in the chancel and the N transept and may be 12thc. The nave is 13thc., and the aisle was added in the 15thc, along with the tower. The church was restored by J. D. Sedding in 1883. The font is the only carved Romanesque feature.

The church was in the Manor of Cargoll, and had extensive lands attached to it, perhaps the endowment of a Celtic monastery. Before the Conquest the manor belonged to the church of St. Petroc at Bodmin, being called Cargav in Edward the Confessors time, but was sized by the Earl of Mortaine and held by him of Bodmin Priory after the Conquest (Maclean). The Norman church at Newlyn was cruciform; the present dedication took place in September, 1259; and in 1269 the manor of Cargol and the advowson of the church were granted by Roger de Valletort to the powerful Bishop Bronescombe of Exeter, the grant being confirmed by Bodmin Priory. In 1283 the eminently desirable church of Newlyn was appropriated to the chancellorship of the Cathedral.

The font is similar to that at Bodmin, by the same sculptors but smaller. The so-called Bodmin group of fonts includes a core set of only four by that workshop; Bodmin itself, Roche, Maker and this one at St Newlyn East. There are at least 14 other fonts of the suspended bowl type with obvious connections to the core set, but their decoration is more simplified or almost non-existent and they are not attributed to the same workshop. The St Newlyn font ismore lively in its decoration than the Bodmin font, with some bizarre local touches. The interlace on the upper part of the bowl is here certainly foliate rather than representative of cords or snakes, and the plants below are more like conventional lilies than the more elaborate Trees of Life found elsewhere in the core group. The beasts carved on the lower part of the bowl are more apparent here than elsewhere, perhaps because the shafts have been replaced.

Pevsner and Beacham do not give a more exact dating than Norman for the font, and likewise the List Description merely attributes it to the 12thc. Sedding suggests c.1160-80, which the present authors accept and the Historic Environment Record repeats.