The great yew tree to the north of the church is believed to be around 5000 years old. It is a male specimen and its girth measures 35 feet. It has a companion female yew which is smaller in the SW of the churchyard. The vast age of these trees means that they have probably stood here since the Stone Age, in a sense being a living connection to those distant times.

The little spring-well near to the N gate together with the yews and the originally round shape of the churchyard suggest this as being a sacred site going back at least to early Celtic Christianity in the 5th and 6th centuries. At that time various missionaries arrived in Wales from Ireland and the Mediterranean following established trade routes. Many were later canonised and the period has become known as the 'Age of the Saints'. The name Discoed is a Welsh derivation of the Old English 'Dytchecot' 'Discote' or 'Dishcot', all derived from words meaning 'cottage under the Dyke'. This refers to Offas Dyke a large Anglo-Saxon earthwork of the late 8th century of which a splendid section survives about a half mile to the West above Yew Tree Farm.

The mound to the N of the churchyard is thought to be of Norman origin. The Doomsday book does not record either a church or castle as being here although it does mention it as being a Manor belonging to a Norman knight called Osbern le Scrob of Richards Castle, near Ludlow. This area was described as 'waste' only providing Osbern with whatever he could catch in the woods that had grown up around here. The small size of this earthwork does not suggest a castle, possibly more a reaction by local workers to the ever-present Welsh threat. A chapel is known to have existed here in 1291, by which time the Manor had passed to the Mortimers of Wigmore, and they had in turn given the chapel to the monastery they had founded at Wigmore Abbey.