St Donats ( cy, Sain Dunwyd) is a village and

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

in the

Vale of Glamorgan The Vale of Glamorgan ( cy, Bro Morgannwg ), often referred to as The Vale, is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. It borders Bridgend County Borough to the west, Cardiff to the east, Rhondda Cynon Taf to the north, and the Bristol C ...

in south

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

, located just west of the small town of

Llantwit Major Llantwit Major ( cy, Llanilltud Fawr) is a town and community in Wales on the Bristol Channel coast. It is one of four towns in the Vale of Glamorgan, with the third largest population (13,366 in 2001) after Barry and Penarth, and ahead of Cowb ...

. The community includes the village of Marcross and the

hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. Its size relative to a parish can depend on the administration and region. A hamlet may be considered to be a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a lar ...

of Monknash and East and West Monkton. It is named after the 6th-century saint, Dunwyd, a friend of Saint

Cadoc Saint Cadoc or Cadog ( lat-med, Cadocus; also Modern Welsh: Cattwg; born or before) was a 5th–6th-century Abbot of Llancarfan, near Cowbridge in Glamorgan, Wales, a monastery famous from the era of the British church as a centre of learnin ...

. It had a population of 732 in 2011. St Donat's church lies in a depression and is unremarkable from the exterior but contains Stradling family

monuments A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

in the Stradling chapel. It is a 12th-century

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building with a

medieval cross in the churchyard. Atlanticcollege11

The village is primarily known as the location of the 12th century

St Donat's Castle St Donat's Castle ( cy, Castell Sain Dunwyd), St Donats, Wales, is a Middle Ages, medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, about to the west of Cardiff, and about to the west of Llantwit Major. Positioned on cliffs overlooking the Bristol Ch ...

, which is now an international

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

occupied by

Atlantic College Atlantic College (formally the United World College of the Atlantic; alternatively styled UWC Atlantic College, UWCAC, or UWCA) is an independent boarding school in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. Founded in 1962, it was the first of t ...

, the first of the

United World College United World Colleges (UWC) is an international network of schools and educational programmes with the shared aim of "making education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future." The organization was founde ...

s. Within the castle grounds lies St Donat's Arts Centre. Atlanticcollege5

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in the Vale of Glamorgan Communities in the Vale of Glamorgan