St Donat's Church, St Donats

St Donat's Castle (Welsh: Castell Sain Dunwyd), St Donats, Wales, is a medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 16 miles (26 km) to the west of Cardiff, and about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) to the west of Llantwit Major. Positioned on cliffs overlooking the Bristol Channel, the site has been occupied since the Iron Age, and was by tradition the home of the Celtic chieftain Caradog. The present castle's origins date from the 12th century when the de Haweys and later Peter de Stradling began its development. The Stradlings held the castle for four hundred years, until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in 1738. During the 18th century, the castle's status and condition declined and by the early 19th century it was only partly habitable. The later 19th and early 20th centuries saw several restorations. In 1852, it was purchased by John Whitlock Nicholl Carne, who claimed descent from the Stradlings but whose efforts at reconstruction were not well regarded. More enlightened improvements were made by its subsequent owner, the coal magnate Morgan Stuart Williams. The castle's transformation occurred after its purchase in 1925 by William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper tycoon. Hearst undertook a "brutal" expansion, including the incorporation of elements from other ancient structures such as the roofs of Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire and St Botolph's Church in Lincolnshire. His approach to architectural reclamation was controversial and the destruction of Bradenstoke was opposed in a vigorous campaign organised by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Bernard Shaw described the castle after Hearst's reconstruction as "what God would have built if he had had the money". Despite spending vast sums of money on St Donat's, Hearst rarely visited and in 1937, with the Hearst Corporation facing financial collapse, the castle was put up for sale, but with war looming, the castle was instead requisitioned for use by the army. In 1960, some nine years after Hearst's death, it was purchased by the son of the businessman and educational philanthropist Antonin Besse and donated to the trustees of Atlantic College, the first of the United World Colleges. Today the castle is home to some 350 international students and, with a history of occupation extending back to the late 13th century, is among the oldest continuously inhabited castles in Wales. Both the castle and the grounds are of historical and architectural importance, and have Grade I listed status.

Atlantic College Lifeboat Station was an Inshore lifeboat station based at 'UWC Atlantic' (formerly the United World College of the Atlantic, more commonly known as Atlantic College), which is located on the Bristol Channel coast of South Wales, at St Donats, near Llantwit Major. The station opened in 1963, shortly after the school had been launched the previous autumn, as one of the first experimental inshore lifeboat stations established by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). The station pioneered innovative boatbuilding techniques, including inventing the Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) and creating the prototype for the Atlantic 21-class lifeboat in the early 1970s. The RNLI withdrew the lifeboat from Atlantic College in June 2013, and the college now concentrates on training beach lifeguards.

UWC Atlantic (formally the United World College of the Atlantic, and often referred to by its original name, Atlantic College) is an independent boarding school in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. Founded in 1962, it was the first of the United World Colleges and was among the first educational institutions in the world to follow an international curriculum; it helped create the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in the 1960s. In addition to the IBDP, UWC Atlantic places student participation in community service at its core. It is known for its liberal education, its global ethos, and its strong focus on local and global sustainability. It is attended by approximately 350 students from more than 90 countries, the majority of whom are selected through their National Committees, which help fund their education through partial or full scholarships; over 65% of students who apply through national committees receive some form of scholarship or financial aid. The diverse student body includes refugees, war victims, and members of persecuted communities, who live and study alongside members of royal families and other students from around the world.

St Donats (Welsh: Sain Dunwyd) is a village and community in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales, located just west of the small town of Llantwit Major. The community includes the village of Marcross and the hamlets of Monknash and East and West Monkton. It is named after the 6th-century saint, Dunwyd, a friend of Saint Cadoc. It had a population of 732 in 2011. St Donat's church, dedicated to St Dunwyd, lies in a depression and is unremarkable from the exterior but contains Stradling family monuments in the Stradling chapel. It is a 12th-century Grade I listed building with a Grade I listed medieval cross in the churchyard. The village is primarily known as the location of the 12th century St Donat's Castle, which is now an international boarding school occupied by Atlantic College, the first of the United World Colleges. Within the castle grounds lies St Donats Arts Centre.

Marcross (Welsh: Marcroes) is a small village in the rural community of St Donats in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. It consists of a public house (the Horseshoe Inn) and a few scattered houses, farms, and a small medieval church in the centre of the village.

Nash Lighthouse Meadow is a Site of Special Scientific Interest near St Donats in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. It is 1.6 hectares in area, along the coastline, and includes the Nash Point Lighthouse.

Tresilian Bay, also Tresillian Bay, is a bay in southeast Wales, west of Llantwit Major's Collugh beach and east of St Donats, on the Bristol Channel. The beach at the bay lies in front of a valley in which the Nant Tresilian flows and empties in the sea. It lies along a stretch of coast and cliff path under protection by the Glamorgan Heritage Coast, characterised by limestone cliffs with many caves and several bays/valleys. There is a distinctive white house, Tresilian House, located at Tresilian Bay at the end of the valley in front of the pebble beach and a pill box on the cliff nearby. The cove of Col Huw is located nearby.

Holy Trinity Church is a Grade I-listed church in Marcross (part of the community of St Donats), a village in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. It received its status as a Grade I-listed building on 22 February 1963.

Nash Point (Welsh: Trwyn yr As) is a headland and beach in the Monknash Coast of the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales, about a mile from Marcross. It is a popular location for ramblers and hiking along the cliffs to Llantwit Major beach. The lighthouse meadow is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, containing rare plants such as the tuberous thistle, and other wildlife such as choughs can be seen. Parts of the section of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast where the lighthouse stands consists of "cliffs of Lias limestone interbedded with softer erodible material" and has been identified as potentially at risk from erosion and flooding. Many fossils, including ammonites and gryphaea are to be found there. Marcross Brook passes through the cliffs and an Iron Age hillfort, usually called Nash Point Camp, stands on the north side of the brook, although its remains have been largely eroded by the sea. Round barrows are also to be found nearby. A study of the rocks shows that they exemplify "a 12,000 year old sequence of tufa, scree and slope deposits containing abundant fossil snails", while the Nash Bank offshore is formed by "Jurassic mudstones overlain by bands of sand and gravel".

Broughton is a small village in the western part of the Vale of Glamorgan, southeast Wales. It lies just northeast of Monknash and south of Wick. It contains a building known as "The Malthouse", now converted into flats. The village has extensive remains of a grange of the former Cistercian Neath Abbey including a dove cote and tithe barn.

Afon Col-huw (also known as the River Colhuw, sometimes anglicised as Colhugh) is a very short river in Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. It is an exceptionally short river, one mile long, formed when two rivers, the Ogney Brook and the Hoddnant, converge south of Llantwit Major. Its valley, the Cwm Col-huw, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument - it was used in the Dig for Victory campaign in World War II.

Llandow (Wick Road) Halt railway station was a short-lived railway station in South Wales.