St Beuno's Jesuit Spirituality Centre

Front of building

In 1832, Following the Act of Catholic Emancipation of 1829, the Jesuits came to North Wales and founded St Winefride's Church in nearby Holywell, Flintshire.[3] In 1846, Fr Randal Lythgoe, the Provincial of the Jesuits in Britain, visited Holywell and travelled around the around. When he came to Tremeirchion, to see some farm land that the Jesuits owned, he immediately decided that this should be the site for a new college. The college would teach theology to Jesuits in training to be priests. It was decided to name the college after a local saint, St Beuno, instead of a saint associated with the Jesuits.

Gardens

Rock chapel

St Beuno's was designed by the architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom, known for the Hansom cab. He went on to design many churches for the Jesuits, such as the Oxford Oratory, St Walburge's Church in Preston, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Spinkhill in 1846, St David's Church, Dalkeith in 1853, Annunciation Church, Chesterfield in 1854, St Joseph's Church, Leigh in 1855, and the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, Manchester in 1871.

In the late 1870s, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins while studying to become a Jesuit priest, described the building, "It is built of limestone, decent outside, skimping within, Gothic like Lancing College done worse."[4]

Originally, St Beuno's College was a quadrangle enclosing a garden. The outside walls were made of stone, with Gothic gargoyles and stone carving, and inside were broad corridors and large but simple rooms. There were classrooms, a library, parlour and recreation room, all connected by a basement corridor on the west side of the building. On the south side, the highest part of the quadrangle, were three galleries which housed the teachers and the students. On the north side was the refectory.

Heating for the lower floor was provided by heat being channelled into the house from a greenhouse attached to the front west side of the building. Fresh water was provided from local streams and kept in tanks, which still exist above the terraces. Food was grown locally both in the college's grounds and on the adjacent college farm. The college had its own gas works. Furthermore, within the grounds, close to the entrance, a small school house was built to serve the local population.

Twenty years after its construction, St Beuno's College needed to the extended to accommodate the increased numbers of Jesuits training there. Extra rooms in the attics were added and a new North Wing was built to the left of the tower.

In 1926, the college ceased being a theology college. The Jesuit students were moved to Heythrop College in Oxfordshire. Instead, St Beuno's became a place of study for the last year of Jesuit training, the tertianship.

During the Second World War it was a place of refuge to many Jesuit novices who were sent from Manresa House in Roehampton, during and after the Blitz. When the war finished, it reverted back to being a tertianship.

From 1862, the Tremeirchion Cross stood at the entrance of St Beuno's. It is a medieval stone carved cross. In the 16th century, it was described in his writings by the poet, Gruffydd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan of Llanerch.[5] It was originally in the churchyard of the local parish Corpus Christi Church in Tremeirchion. In 1862, the church sold it for £5 to raise funds to buy new lamps. It was bought by a Mr J. Y. Hinde of Rhyl who then gave it to St Beuno's. In 2002, St Beuno's gave it back to the local church, where it now stands in the churchyard, where it is a Grade II listed monument.[6]

From 1970 the house began to host its first retreats. It was originally received religious sisters for 8-day and then later, for longer 30-day retreats. While the training of Jesuits became increasingly difficult in the countryside, far from city centres, the retreat work grew from strength to strength, So in 1980, St Beuno's became a retreat centre.

St Beuno's has a programme of retreats all the year round, ranging from short weekend retreats to ones that last 30 days. It also offers courses in Ignatian Spirituality from one to six months' duration.[7]

From 2018 to 2020 a large-scale renovation was undertaken to add en-suite facilities to rooms, create larger rooms for meetings and modernise the front entrance.[8]

In the 2010s, retreats at St Beuno's began to be featured in the national media.[9][10][11] In 2010, it was a location for the BBC series The Big Silence where participants spent 8 days on a silent retreat at St Beuno's.[12] In 2017, two actors also did an 8-day retreat there in preparation for the Martin Scorsese film Silence.[13][14]