St Beuno's Ignatian Spirituality Centre

Origins

St Beuno's College in Tremeirchion, near St Asaph in North Wales, UK, was built in 1848 as a place of study for Jesuits. It was built as a "theologate", a place where trainee priests study theology, along the lines of a small Oxbridge college. Up to this time prospective Jesuit priests studied in Stonyhurst College, near Clitheroe in rural Lancashire and for a short time abroad, but the increasing numbers put a strain on the old buildings. In 1846 Fr Randal Lythgoe, the then Superior of the Society of Jesus in Britain, while visiting a Jesuit parish at Holywell in Flintshire, travelled to see some farm land that the Society owned near Tremeirchion, and immediately decided that this should be the site for a new theologate. In early Victorian days, when epidemics of typhoid and cholera regularly swept towns and cities killing large numbers, the fresh country air of North Wales was considered to provide a suitable environment in which to prepare young men to go and serve in the new industrial towns and cities. The dedication of the college – not to a traditional Jesuit saint but to a well-known local abbot, St Beuno – is very unusual in the Society of Jesus.

Hansom the architect

The architect of the building was Joseph Aloysius Hansom, best known for the Hansom cab. Outwardly the fine stone buildings give a grand impression; inside there are broad corridors and large but simple rooms. Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet who studied at St Beuno's from 1874–77, described the building in a letter to his father: "It is built of limestone, decent outside, skimping within, Gothic like Lancing College done worse." St Beuno's incorporates features popular in Gothic buildings such as gargoyles and stone carvings.

Hansom's St Beuno's enclosed a quadrangle garden. On the west side of the quad there was a basement gallery containing the Recreation Room, a schoolroom, two private rooms and the Entrance Hall. On the floor above was the Library, which looks both inside and out as though it were a chapel (and is a chapel today), the Rector's Room and a "stranger's" room. On the south side, the tallest side, rising higher than the tower, were three galleries which housed the teachers and the students. On the north side was the refectory with a pulpit for the reader.

Within 20 years of its being built the College was too small: extra rooms in the attics were added and a new North Wing was built to the left of the Tower, all very much in keeping with Hansom's original design.

Environmental impact

In its early days the College could be said to have been environmentally friendly: heating for the lower floor was solar, at least in part, with the heat from the greenhouse below the West Front being channelled into the house. Fresh water was provided from local streams and kept in tanks, which still exist above the terraces, and food was grown locally both in the College's grounds and on the adjacent College Farm. And, though perhaps not so environmentally sound, the college had its own gas works. There was also a school built for local children.

Tremeirchion Rood Cross

In 1862 the College was presented with a medieval cross by a Mr Hynde, who bought it for £5 from the Anglicans at Corpus Christi, Tremeirchion. The Tremeirchion Rood of Grace stood for 140 years on a plinth at the entrance to St Beuno's before being restored and then translated back to Tremeirchion churchyard as a Millennium gift. It now stands beneath the yew under which in the mid-19th century it had been found buried.

Rock Chapel

In 1866, what can best be described as a folly, the "Rock Chapel", was built on a wooded hill to the south of St Beuno's. This was designed by a Jesuit student, Ignatius Scoles, who had followed the footsteps of his father, Joseph John Scoles, and trained as an architect before joining the Jesuits to become a priest. He went on to design St Wilfrid's Church in Preston.

Theologians move out – Tertians move in

The College remained as a theologate until 1926 when the students were moved to Heythrop College in Oxfordshire. It then 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 London during and after the Blitz. After the War it reverted to being a place of tertianship until 1980, although ten years earlier the house had begun to open to religious sisters on first 8-day and then 30-day retreats. During the 1970s, as those engaged in the tertianship became increasingly uneasy living in the countryside, the retreat work grew from strength to strength.

Only two very poor, unsympathetic additions have been made to the St Beuno's buildings since the 1870s – a brick-built ablution block and a boiler room.

Listed building

In 2002 St Beuno's was categorised as a Grade II* listed building and a Welsh Historic Monument (Denbighshire CC, Record No. 26459). The listing characterises the building as of great architectural interest so that it cannot be altered without reference to the listed buildings authority, Cadw. As well as the building, the long flight of Welsh slate steps up the garden and the massive retaining wall there are also listed as being of architectural interest.

Today the house has a thriving programme of retreats all the year round, from weekends to 30 days. It also offers courses in Ignatian Spirituality from one to six months' duration.