[10] While there was mining of coal in the area on a small scale, the late eighteenth century saw an expansion in activity, particularly after the industrialist John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson purchased Brymbo Hall and began developing its estate, mining coal and ironstone and building an ironworks which was later to become the Brymbo Steelworks.

[11] In the nineteenth century, a number of larger deep mines were sunk around the area, and the majority of the village of Brymbo was developed as accommodation for the miners and ironworkers.

The village itself was constructed on and around the steep sides of Brymbo Hill with views towards the Cheshire Plain, though the area's topography was later to cause problems when the steelworks expanded in 1956: the new parts had to be built on a vast artificial plateau of slag from the furnaces, filling the width of the valley and burying most of the village of Lodge, whose houses were purchased and demolished.

The first church in Brymbo was St John's, consecrated in 1838; it was closed in 1869 after it was affected by subsidence due to construction work on the Wrexham and Minera Railway.

[14] Predictably this church was also affected by subsidence and was demolished in the 1970s; its churchyard is now a small park including the village war memorial.

In 2001 Manchester University produced a wax model reconstruction of the skull which can also be seen in the galleries of Wrexham Museum.

Another archaeological find was made in 2006 by workers redeveloping the site of the former steelworks – a fossilised forest of the petrified wood of over 20 trees, dating from the Carboniferous Period.

Above the village stand the remains of Wilkinson's lead smelter, the "Bottle", next to a pond (locally known as the "Cold Pool") used to supply water to the Steelworks until 1990: in the nearby hamlet of Pen-Rhos is the Penrhos Engine House, also built by Wilkinson and now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

The building firm, Taylor Wimpey built a new housing estate on the land in 2007, dubbed 'Mountain View'.