Standing on the Clwydian Range, the front of the building faces west towards Snowdonia and overlooks the Vale of Clwyd.

[1] 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 toured the neighbouring area.

In the late 1870s, Gerard Manley Hopkins while studying there, described the building, as "built of limestone, decent outside, skimping within, Gothic like Lancing College done worse.

There were classrooms, a library, parlour and recreation room, all connected by a basement corridor on the west side of the building.

Twenty years after its construction, St Beuno's College needed to be extended to accommodate the increased numbers of Jesuits training there.

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.

Whereas the training of Jesuits became increasingly difficult in the countryside, far from city centres, the retreat work grew in popularity.

[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.

Ignatius went on to design St Wilfrid's Church in Preston, Lancashire, Brickdam Cathedral and Georgetown City Hall in Guyana.