IN ANCIENT TIMES
Certainly the immediate infliction of fines and confiscations, after the Llywelyn Bren uprising, drove the region to the verge of destitution. The harshness of administration seems to have been paralleled or reflected by that of the elements for there was a succession of bad harvests and cattle disease. This combination of depressing conditions probably explains the evacuation of the homesteads on the moorlands at this time.
Llwyn Iago farm in the village is thought to have been built on the site of what was originally a "platform house"
Excavations at Dinas Noddfa on the western side of Carn Bugail on Mynydd Fochriw in 1936 were successful in obtaining plans of two "long houses" of unusual type, but failed to produce precise evidence of the date they were inhabited.
During the immediate post-Roman period the Principality was involved in a series of dynastic quarrels as well as being engaged in a perennial struggle with the Anglo-Saxon invaders.
In an old "History of Cambria" which was translated from the British tongue by Humphrey Llwyd (1527-68), Ethelbaldus, king of the English midland kingdom of Mercia in A.D. 728, is said to have been desirous of annexing the fertile soil west of the Severn. He entered into Wales and was met by the men of Glamorgan at a mountain called Carno, where a "sore battell was fought between him and the Brytaines ".
There is plenty of evidence that the West Saxons penetrated well into the east of Glamorgan, burning and plundering wherever they went, as they did in the year 831, ravaging Caerphilly and Cardiff and returning over the Severn with a great quantity of spoil.
The pre-Norman "Motte and Bailey" to the south-east of Gelligaer Church may originally have been one of a series of mounds built to withstand the assault of the marauding Saxons in the eighth and ninth centuries.
The coming of William of Normandy in 1066 made very little difference at the time to our district. One knows that the conqueror visited St. David's in 1080 ostensibly to pay his respects to the shrine of our national Patron Saint.
The subsequent story of the conquest of south Wales shows that the purpose of the pilgrimage was more mundane than pious. Within a year Cardiff Castle began to rise and it, together with the castles at Newport and Chepstow, became bases for the subjugation of Glamorgan and Gwent.
An ancient monument, of a stone not of a native type, has been found embedded in the walls of Capel Brithdir, having an inscribed cross of a Celtic type. It is thought the stone may have stood in the vicinity of the site of the Capel and from it might well have been derived the name of the neighbouring farm of Groesfaen.