Llancaiach Fawr

Llancaiach Fawr sits near the village of Nelson in the Rhymney Valley, raised on the site of an earlier medieval structure — either on top of the older dwelling or possibly incorporated within its eastern end. The house was long thought to have been built in about 1530 for Dafydd ap Richard, whose patronymic "ap Rhisiart" was modernised to Prichard; it was once held to predate the Acts of Union of 1536, and is mentioned in John Leland's Itinerary of 1537. Dendrochronology carried out during a Time Team excavation gave a felling date for the roof timbers of 1548–1565, later than had been supposed; digging in the grounds for that predecessor, the team found no evidence of it. Dafydd ap Richard is known to have been lord of the manor in 1549.

The house was designed to be easily defended in a turbulent period. A single entrance served the whole building, walls four feet thick enclosed spiral stone staircases between the floors, and stout wooden doors carried iron bolts; there may originally have been as many as fourteen staircases, one to each room. With the doors securely closed the manor was effectively divided in two, the inner east wing forming a self-contained place of refuge in case of attack. It is considered one of the finest surviving examples of a semi-fortified manor in Wales.

By the beginning of the Stuart dynasty the Prichards had prospered, and in 1628 David Prichard — father of Colonel Edward Prichard — extended the house to demonstrate the family's status. A Grand Staircase now allowed easy movement between floors, two of the rooms used by the family were panelled in oak, and a four-centred arch was set above the stair, and mullioned windows were added.

Servants outnumbered the family they served. In Colonel Prichard's time some fifteen are thought to have lived in, with another fifteen employed as outworkers, taken on at the hiring fair held each Lady Day and paid by the quarter. Higher-status posts such as housekeeper, agent and valet often passed from generation to generation within one family. The most important was the Steward, an educated man fluent in Welsh and English, with a strong knowledge of the law and a good insight into the local tenantry.

When Civil War broke out between King and Parliament in 1642, Colonel Edward Prichard of Llancaiach Fawr was appointed Commissioner of Array to the King, raising men and money for the Royalist cause in Glamorganshire. His wife Mary was the sister of Bussy Mansell, a zealous Parliamentarian. By the middle of 1645 royal support was waning and Charles I toured South Wales in an effort to rally it; he visited Llancaiach Fawr on 5 August that year. Archaeologists digging in the grounds recovered a silver coin bearing the King's image, dated 1645.

Shortly afterwards the Prichards and many other Glamorgan gentry changed sides to support Parliament. Later in 1645 Colonel Prichard was appointed Governor of Cardiff Castle, and in February 1646 he staunchly held Cardiff Castle for the Parliamentarians against a siege headed by Edward Carne. After the battle of St Fagans in 1648, Colonel Horton, the Parliamentary victor, commended him "for his constancy in that affray". Prichard died in 1655.

When the house passed out of Prichard hands it was worked as a farmhouse; the Tithe Map of 1842 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1875 both show an orchard at the rear. The former Rhymney Valley District Council bought the manor in 1979 and restored it through the 1980s with a view to opening it as a local history museum; after modern conveniences had been added it was decided instead to run it as a living history museum, which opened in the early 1990s.

The museum fixed its setting at 1645, with costumed interpreters taking the roles of the household servants, speaking entirely in period English and feigning unfamiliarity with anything after that year. In 2013 Caerphilly County Borough Council secured £943,200 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to replace the roof, install a platform lift and restore the attic as servants' quarters; the new slate roof was delayed by the presence of bats, a protected species, in the attics. The work ran from late 2013 to 2015, and First Minister Carwyn Jones unveiled the restored servants' quarters that year. Grade I listed and a National Monument of Wales, and reckoned one of the most important gentry houses to survive from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the manor closed to the public on 22 December 2024, the council citing budgetary restraints.