WICK, a parish, in the union of BRIDGEND-AND-COWBRIDGE, hundred of OGMORE, county of GLAMORGAN, SOUTH WALES, 54 miles (S.)
from Bridgend; containing 377 inhabitants. The parish is situated on the coast of the Bristol Channel, and intersected by
a road from Lantwit-Major to St. Bride's-Major; the surface is rather flat, with very little timber, and the soil partly a
stiff clay or rich loam, capable of producing wheat, barley, and turnips. The living is consolidated with the vicarage
of St. Bride's-Major: the church, dedicated to St. James, is a plain edifice, supposed to have been erected about the
year 1300, and is sixty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth. There are places of worship for Unitarian Baptists and
Calvinistic Methodists. A National day school contains about 60 children, 24 of whom are educated by aid of subscription,
and the rest paid for by their parents; and a Sunday school affords gratuitous instruction to about 55 males and females:
the master, who is the same for both schools, is allowed £20 per annum for teaching the above-named 24 children, and has
£3 for superintending the Sunday school. Anthony Patch bequeathed £5, Thomas Williams a small rent-charge, and two unknown
benefactors the respective sums of £14 and £10, for the relief of the poor; but all these charities, which, in 1786,
produced £1. 16. per annum for distribution, have been since lost, and nothing has been received out of them for the last
20 years. Near the church are the ruins of an extensive building covered with ivy, by some supposed to have been a
religious house, though there is no record of any establishment of the kind; and by others thought to have been one of
the ancient halls so frequently met with in this county, in which the lords marcher held their courts, and which were
subsequently converted into schools and almshouses, and were generally known by the appellation of " church houses." But
it has now been clearly ascertained that the building is nothing more than a large "cattle fold," which is indeed the
literal meaning of its name, Y Buarth Mawr; a simple fact, which presents a striking instance of the insecurity of
property in these cliarts in former days. Almost all the villages around are built about the churches as centres, with a
spacious area within the circle for folding the cattle and other stock of the district, which were driven to these places
of security at night-fall, and carefully ed from the depredations of the ever vigilant fonea,rdwho hovered about the
coast, and in his light craft was ready to make a descent on the unwary or negligent inhabitants, carrying away, not only
their goods and chattels, but frequently their persons into captivity. All along this coast are innumerable traces of the
fierce contests between our ancestors and their harassing spoilers; every natural eminence had been taken advantage of,
and rudely converted into some kind of fortification; every combe or cwm bears evident traces of having been the scene of
a deadly struggle; and the size and strength of the building alluded to, evince that it was no easy task to repel the
attacks, it being furnished with embrasures and loop-holes, and the porch or great entrance being defended on each side
like the outer port of a castle.