The Society of the Sacred Heart came to Llannerchwen in 1979, in response to an inspiration
by Sister Joan Scott rscj, whose own two-year experience living as a hermit,
led her to feel the need to set up a place where people would be able to have the
opportunity for a time of solitude, as well as the possibility of receiving some
spiritual accompaniment if requested.
These two options are still at the heart of what
the Society is offering to those who come, and this, together with the fact that all of
our retreat accommodation is now in self-contained units, is what makes Llannerchwen
quite unique.
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It is interesting to note that the previous owners of Llannerchwen had also been running
it as a small retreat centre. A retired Anglican clergyman and his wife lived in what is
now the main community bungalow, whilst a single woman who was a distant relative of our
late Queen Mother, lived in what we now call the Lower Bungalow. When the time came for
them to leave, they decided that they would only sell the property to people who were
prepared to continue to use Llannerchwen for some spiritual purpose, and then along came
Joan Scott, alerted to the availability of the property by a past pupil of one of our
schools!
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Going even further back into the history of the property, we had always been told that
what is now our Chapel, had once been a cow-shed and that the adjoining area (where Joan
Scott originally lived), had been a pig-stye, in the days when the place had been part of
a farm. One day in the summer of 2006, this information was definitively confirmed for us
when Clare was working in the garden and saw an elderly lady tentatively approaching.
She asked whether she could have a look around, as she had been born in what we now call
the Cottage! This photograph shows her standing at the door.
When she saw that the
place where she had milked cows as a child, had been turned into a Chapel, she was
visibly moved. She has since kept in touch with us, and hopes to visit again.
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