Wick is a village in

South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, South West England. Towns in the area include Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke, the latter three forming ...

, England. It is the main settlement in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Wick and Abson. The population of this civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 1,989.

Description

It is situated on the A420 between

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

and Chippenham, south of the Cotswolds. The

River Boyd The River Boyd is a river of some in length which rises near Dodington in South Gloucestershire, England. It is a tributary of the Bristol Avon, running in a southerly direction and joining near Bitton. The flow rate at Bitton is an average . ...

flows through the old village, with its watermeadows facing St. Bartholomew's Church, a grade II* listed building dating from 1850. As well as the church, the village has several shops, the Rose & Crown and (now defunct) Carpenters Arms public houses, a village hall, sports ground, and Wick Primary School. Brockwell Park provides a green space for the village with a play area and a trim trail, as well as a Community Orchard planted in 2020. Nearby Blue Lodge was once the home of ''

Black Beauty ''Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse'' is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill.Merriam-Webster (1995). ...

'' author Anna Sewell and Tracy Park on the Bath Road (now a

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

club) was thought to be the inspiration for ''Black Beauty's'' Birtwick Park. The picturesque Golden Valley is well known for walking, birding and

equestrian The word equestrian is a reference to equestrianism, or horseback riding, derived from Latin ' and ', "horse". Horseback riding (or Riding in British English) Examples of this are: * Equestrian sports *Equestrian order, one of the upper classes i ...

activity. It was described by the poet

John Dennys John Dennys (died 1609), a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work ''The Secrets of Angling'' was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare. Early ...

of Pucklechurch in his work of 1613 ''

The Secrets of Angling ''The Secrets of Angling'' was a book written by John Dennys. It was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing, first published in 1613 in London. A didactic pastoral poem in 3 books, in the style of Virgil's Georgics. It was published ...

'', the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing:

And thou sweet Boyd that with thy watry sway
Dost wash the cliffes of Deington and of Weeke
And through their Rockes with crooked winding way
Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seek.

The authorship of the poem was a mystery for many years, having been published anonymously, and it was partly due to his mention of the rocks of Wick that he was finally identified. The Golden Valley is also a favorite destination for

hot air balloon A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries ...

ists. Adjacent to Golden Valley is the historic Bury Manor.

Wick Quarry, a limestone quarry previously owned by

CEMEX CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V., known as Cemex, is a Mexican multinational building materials company headquartered in San Pedro, near Monterrey, Mexico. It manufactures and distributes cement, ready-mix concrete and aggregates in more than 50 countries ...

, is no longer operational but is a haven for wildlife and also a birdwatching site. The site is now owned by MJ Church. Part of the site is managed by South Gloucestershire Council as the Golden Valley Nature Reserve.https://www.goldenvalley.org.uk/

References

External links

{{Coord, 51, 27, 10, N, 2, 25, 25, W, scale:100000, display=title Villages in South Gloucestershire District