St Beuno's Ignatian Spirituality Centre
| St Beuno's | |
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| St Beuno's Ignatian Spirituality Centre | |
| St Beuno's College | |
St Beuno's frontage
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 St Beuno's
Location in Denbighshire
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| Coordinates: 53°15′25.85″N 3°22′50.81″W / 53.2571806°N 3.3807806°W | |
| OS grid reference | 307989, 374229 |
| Location | Tremeirchion, Denbighshire |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Website | Beunos.com |
| History | |
| Former name(s) | St Beuno's College |
| Founded | 1846 |
| Founder(s) | Fr Randal Lythgoe SJ |
| Dedication | Saint Beuno |
| Associated people |
Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ Ignatius Scoles SJ |
| Architecture | |
| Status | Active |
| Functional status | Spirituality Centre |
| Heritage designation | Grade II* listed |
| Designated | 2002 |
| Architect(s) | Joseph Hansom |
| Completed | 1848 |
| Administration | |
| Parish | St Winefride's |
| Deanery | Rhyl |
| Diocese | Wrexham |
| Province | Cardiff |
| Clergy | |
| Bishop(s) | Rt. Rev. Peter Brignall |
| Rector | Fr Tom Shufflebotham SJ |
| Dean | Rev. John Lochran |
St Beuno's Ignatian Spirituality Centre, known locally as St Beuno's College, is a grade II* listed building and Jesuit college in Tremeirchion, Denbighshire, Wales. It served as home for the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins during his theological studies.
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.
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.
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