The Catholic Church was starting to re-emerge with some strength in areas of Wales after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Catholicism had survived to varying degrees, most notably in Monmouthshire, and in the 1851 Census only 76 Catholic attendances were recorded in Denbighshire . Denbigh, as in its early attitudes to Nonconformism, was religiously conservative and in 1825 had petitioned the House of Lords against the Catholic concessions being considered.

Rudolph Feilding, 8th Earl of Denbigh and his wife converted to Catholicism after marriage and subsequently handed a new church he was building at Pantasaph to the Capuchin Franciscans. These together with a community of Jesuits at St Beuno's, were the main influences in North Wales over the next 50 years, during which it became part of the Diocese of Shrewsbury. It was the latter institution which established the first Catholic mission in Denbigh in 1853, noted as some 25 years overdue. The priest was initially located at Twysog, home of the Parry family, with occasional masses at the home of one Charles Sankey and his wife Mary Anne Parry on Vale Street . In 1863 Father Everard Arundell built the first chapel-school at Lon Sycar on land donated free by a Mrs Ainsworth, a stone bungalow being added to the sanctuary end of the chapel in 1910.

The building is notable by its inconspicuousness as a place of worship, its vernacular feel reminiscent of the early chapels.