Wick is a suburb of

Devizes Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It developed around Devizes Castle, an 11th-century Norman architecture, Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-century ...

in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. Until around 1800, when expansion of Devizes turned it into a suburb, Wick was a village. The area is in the south of Devizes and lies west off the A360, which passes from Devizes to

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

History

There was a Roman settlement at Wick apparently from the 2nd to the 4th century, around the area once occupied by Pans Lane Halt. There are also faint indications of another settlement on the green, and a cemetery on the site of Southbroom junior school. Wick is first mentioned in 1249 and is called 'the Weke' in 1542. In 1736–7 the settlement consisted of Upper Wick and Wick but in 1759 Upper Wick no longer existed. In 1773 Wick was renamed Devizes Wick, to distinguish it from Potterne Wick, further to the south. In 1795–6 the hamlet contained between 30 and 33 assessable houses. Wick was later known for its dairy industry, none of which exists today. Until its closure in 1964, Pans Lane Halt on the Devizes Branch Line served

Roundway Hospital Roundway Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in the parish of Roundway near Devizes, Wiltshire, England. It was originally called the Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum and later the Wiltshire County Mental Hospital. It opened in 1851 and closed in ...

, a mental hospital which closed in 1995. The former hospital was converted for housing and

Green Lane Hospital Green Lane Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in the Wick district of Devizes in Wiltshire, England. It is managed by the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. History The hospital was built in 1990 in the grounds of Roundway ...

was built on part of its site.

Today

Today Wick is an entirely residential area, including a school and hospital. The original housing was built around the 1900s and most of the new housing was developed in the 1950s and 1960s. The newest housing development in the Drews Pond area was built in 2007. There is little room for any more housing due to the awkward geography that situates Wick on the edge of Devizes hill. It is roughly 1 mile from the centre of town. Most of the land surrounding Wick is

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

and arable. To the south of Wick is Drews Pond Forest, a popular place for walking.

References

Villages in Wiltshire Devizes {{Wiltshire-geo-stub