Maintaining a thriving farming community for centuries, Wenvoe, while still a farming village to an extent, has doubled in population in the last hundred years due to new housing developments.
The village originally developed around the parish church of St. Mary, which can be traced back to the twelfth century with the adjacent locality now being a conservation area. Wenvoe is recorded as having belonged to the De Sully, le Fleming and Malefaunt famililies in the later medieval periods. After being escheated to the crown the castle of Wenvoe belonged successively to the Thomas, Birt and Jenner families. Major development occurred in the 1770s but much of this was obliterated by a fire in 1910. Some medieval or earlier fortification is also known to have existed in the wooded hillside at Wrinstone.[2]
An electoral ward with the same name exists. The total ward population taken at the 2011 census was 2,659,[4] though in 2022 the neighbouring community of St Nicholas and Bonvilston was transferred to a new ward.[5]
The village has a village shop with a post office, a parish church, primary school, hotel, a part-time library, barber and three village halls.
It is home to three pubs (two that have been in the village for hundreds of years – The Wenvoe Arms and The Horse & Jockey at nearby Twyn-yr-Odyn, both of which are protected buildings – and the more recent Walston Castle) and many acres of forestry and fields. There is another church at St Lythans. A village show is held every September at the Community Centre hosted by the village Scout Group.
The Tinkinswood burial chamber is about 3.5 km (2+1⁄2 miles) north west of Wenvoe, near the village of St Nicholas), or about 6 km (3+3⁄4 miles) by road towards Bonvilston. Tinkinswood is more extensive than St Lythans, which it may have once resembled, and was constructed during the same period.
Between the St Lythans and Tinkinswood burial chambers lie Dyffryn Gardens, to whose estate both burial chambers once belonged.
Dyffryn Gardens is a collection of botanical gardens located near the village of St. Nicholas. They were selected by the British Tourism Association as one of the Top 100 gardens in the UK.[7]
