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 castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-century civil war between St ...

in the English

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers 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, Gloucestershir ...

. 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 Potterne is a village and civil parish in the county of Wiltshire, England. The village is south of Devizes and lies on the A360 which links Devizes to Salisbury. The civil parish includes the hamlet of Potterne Wick. History There is evide ...

, 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, a mental hospital which closed in 1995. The former hospital was converted for housing and Green Lane Hospital 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 (see ...

and

arable Arable relates to the growing of crops: * Arable farming or agronomy, the cultivation of field crops * Arable land, land upon which crops are cultivated * Arable crops program The arable crops program is a consolidated support system operated und ...

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

References

Villages in Wiltshire Devizes {{Wiltshire-geo-stub