Loyola Hall
| Loyola Hall | |
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| Loyola Hall Jesuit Spirituality Centre | |
Front entrance
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 Loyola Hall
Location in Merseyside
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| Coordinates: 53°24′35″N 2°45′07″W / 53.409724°N 2.751872°W | |
| OS grid reference | SJ5012490608 |
| Location | Rainhill, Merseyside |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| History | |
| Former name(s) | Rainhill House Rainhill Hall |
| Founded | 27 April 1923 |
| Founder(s) | Fr George Pollen SJ |
| Events |
Extended in 1967 |
| Architecture | |
| Status | Closed |
| Functional status | Retreat Centre |
| Heritage designation | Grade II |
| Designated | 28 January 1971 |
| Completed | 1824 |
| Closed | 2014 |
| Administration | |
| Parish | St Bartholomew, Rainhill |
| Deanery | St Helen's South |
| Archdiocese | Liverpool |
| Province | Liverpool |
Extended in 1967
Loyola Hall or Loyola Hall Jesuit Spirituality Centre is a country house built in the 19th-century in Rainhill, Merseyside, England, by Bartholomew Bretherton. It was a retreat house run by the Society of Jesus from 1923 to 2014. It is situated on the Warrington Road, next to St Bartholomew's Church. It is a Grade II listed building.
Bartholomew Bretherton started a business in coaches in 1800 in Liverpool. On journeys to Manchester or London, Rainhill was the first stop where horses were changed. In 1807 he came to live in the village.
In 1824 he built Rainhill House. In 1869, Mary Stapleton-Bretherton, his daughter, enlarged the house to over twice its original size, renaming it Rainhill Hall. When Mary died in 1883, the Stapleton-Bretherton family owned all the land that made up the parish of Rainhill.
As Mary was childless, she left the family estate to Frederick Bretherton, the only son of her cousin Bartholomew Bretherton, a former coach proprietor. His granddaughter Evelyn Stapleton-Bretherton married Prince Gebhard Blücher von Wahlstatt (1865–1931), becoming Princess Evelyn Blücher. Her memoirs, Princess Blucher, English Wife in Berlin (Constable, 1920) were translated into French and German and reprinted many times, becoming a minor classic.
However, his grandson Frederick, Evelyn's brother, had no direct heir, so Frederick decided to sell the bulk of the family's Rainhill estates. The house and five acres of surrounding land were sold to the Society of Jesus and renamed Loyola Hall.
The Jesuits took possession of the site in 1923. They moved from Oakwood Hall, a retreat centre they had in Romiley, in what was then Cheshire now Greater Manchester, into Rainhill Hall. The Jesuits named it Loyola Hall after Loyola in the Basque Country of Spain, the birthplace of their founder Saint Ignatius, where a religious complex now houses a very large retreat centre, shrine, and basilica.
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Wikipedia