'Popish Plot'. 16th to 19th century The Norman tradition of primogeniture had taken over in Glamorgan, in contrast with traditional Welsh law. In the 1670s, With no sons to inherit, the Carne family lands were divided between two surviving Carne daughters upon their marriages. Colwinston thus became the property of Sir Edward Mansel, 4th Baronet, of Margam when he married Martha Carne. In 1747 Bussy Mansel, 4th Baron Mansel, succeeded to the title. Having no male heirs, he sold the ‘Manor of Colwinston’ to David Thomas ‘of Bath’. Thomas had married into the family that owned Pwllywrach, where he built a new ‘Manor house’. Four generations later the Manor was again without a male heir after the death of Hubert be Burgh Thomas. His sister, Mary Anna Thomas, married Charles John Prichard some time after 1878, placing the land at Colwinston in trust for their son, Hubert Cecil Prichard. Small farms were often then sold on to other farmers and landowners in this period. The Golden Mile Common, an area of approximately 70 acres lying alongside the A48, was ‘enclosed’ by an Act of Parliament called the ‘Golden Mile Award’ in 1871. The village population in the 19th century thus became formed around the Pwllywrach House and Hilton Farm, a number of small farm units stretching west–east from Ty Maen to the Yew Tree and Chapel Farms, north to Claypit and Highfield Farms and south to Stembridge and Parcau Farms, some labourers’ cottages owned by the Pwllywrach estate and others, the Church and the Parsonage (and the then Vicarage) and three chapels. Some of the land on the northern side of village was owned by Jesus College, Oxford. Agriculture was supported by other trades including the Sycamore Tree Inn (recorded back to at least 1840, the building is post-medieval), a forge and blacksmith, baker, shoemaker, post office and horse breaker. However, there was a substantial turnover in the village population following the start of the Industrial Revolution. Census records show that of the 268 people living in the village in 1861, only 98 had been living in the village in 1851; 168 people who died or moved away during that decade were replaced by a high number of births and people moving in from West Wales and Ireland. The 1861 census also reveals the existence of a private school within the village. A "National" school, supported by the (then) Church