One-Man-Band: Clough Williams-Ellis’ Architectural Ensemble at Portmeirion
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Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 One-Man-Band: Clough Williams-Ellis’ architectural ensemble at Portmeirion Maria Angelica Manosalva Dissertation MA Architectural History, UCL September 2019 Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Abstract One-Man-Band: Clough Williams-Ellis’s architectural ensemble at Portmeirion This thesis argues that Portmeirion, a holiday resort in North Wales built and designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis from 1925 to 1976, is not an ‘idiosyncratic playground of little interest’ but an architectural site that not only followed the pattern of expansion of seaside tourist resorts in Britain since the early 1900s but also responded to them through its unique and sustainable ‘light-opera’ approach. Whilst the village’s characteristic look corresponds to the fact that Williams-Ellis aesthetically designed every corner, down to the last detail, it also reflects his lifelong efforts of introducing pleasurable and accessible forms of architecture to the public. Through a narrative mode of creative-writing describing a journey to Portmeirion, the strong association of the village with fictional stories such as the 1960s TV series The Prisoner and its long disregard within British architectural history are challenged – thus positioning Portmeirion as an exemplar of reactions against what were regarded as unsympathetic rural leisure developments in the early-twentieth century. Keywords:Clough Williams-Ellis, Leisure, Tourism, British Culture, Narratives, Preservation. [ iii ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Contents Abstract iii Introduction 2 Provenance 9 Architect Errant, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis ‘Propaganda for Seemliness’ Barrie-Land-On-Sea Realization 33 Flight to the coast Amenity Propaganda Correcting and Concentrating Coastal Development Around the Village 50 A Folly Upon Folly Portmeirion as a ‘Vivreation’ Conclusion 67 Appendices 71 Appendix 1: List of Welsh Holiday Parks Appendix 2: List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion Appendix 3: List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion List of Illustrations 91 Bibliography 98 Acknowledgments 109 [ v ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Fig. 1. Transcript from ‘Mini-Stories: Volume 5’ (Episode 333), a podcast by 99% [ 1 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Introduction demands your cooperation, if not capitulation”, in the words of the LA Times TV critic, Robert Lloyd, made The Prisoner a or This transcript comes from a podcast I first ‘cult classic’ – more precisely, only the original version, listened to in December 2018. In it the host and because the 2009 remake was seen as creator of the radio show 99% Invisible, named “more than a since the number of episodes was more Roman Mars, talks with one of the members of his bit daffy” than halved, the McGoohan was replaced, and the team about The Prisoner, a 1967 British TV show set, arguably the most important part of the developed within the context of the Cold War and show, was a misfire.1 the 1960s boom in spy genre novels and series – among them Ian Fleming’s glamorous James Bond The Village , in the 1967 version, was a novels. The Prisoner follows the struggles of a ‘ ’ seeming architectural pastiche with buildings of former British agent (known as No. 6 and played a variety in different styles ranging from Arts- by Patrick McGoohan) trying to escape from ‘The and-Crafts to Nordic Classicism, and all of them Village’, a mysterious yet charming seaside painted in soft pastel colors. This mixture of community where he was abducted and taken as a architecture, along with the fact that its prisoner after his resignation. The more that surrounding woodlands (known as he G yllt ) the story develops both the set and narrative ‘T w ’ and seashore bay seemingly isolate it, turn more and more bizarre. Nonetheless, its suggested The Village existed in an ultra-strange looks only added to the story, that ‘ ’ uncertain and indeed enigmatic geographical which along with its portrayal of the idea of site. “the inalienable right to self in a world that 1 Robert Lloyd, “McGoohan Really Had Our Number,” Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2009, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-15-et- Audience Won’t Be Held Captive,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2009, mcgoohan15-story.html; Robert Lloyd, “TELEVISION REVIEW : The https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-14-et-prisoner14-story.html. [ 2 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Fig. 2. Still from The Prisoner, ‘Arrival’ (Episode 1) (2:47). [ 3 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 Throughout The Prisoner, No. 6 is told the approximate location of this place: first in Lithuania, “thirty miles…from the Polish border”; then on the “coast of Morocco, southwest of Portugal and Spain”, as some of his colleagues deduce in “Many Happy Returns” (Episode Seven). It is not until the final episode, “Fall Out” – the strangest of them all – where the specific location shoot is clearly identified as Portmeirion, a holiday resort in northern Wales created and developed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978) from 1925 to 1976. It has been argued that both Portmeirion and The Prisoner represent an alternate reality to our everyday life, a Postmodern and Disneyesque world of constant surveillance and cheeriness, which some believe is the reason why Patrick McGoohan as both producer and star of the show chose this site – a suspiciously too happy and unusual place to be actually real.2 In fact, instead of being a deceitful place in Fig. 3. Stills from The Prisoner (2009 miniseries) trailer showing ‘The Village’. Houses at dusk (0:06) top and city center (0:19) bottom. 2 99% Invisible, “Mini Stories: Volume 5,” Mini-Stories, accessed December 18, 2018, https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/99- invisible/id394775318?l=en&i=1000426080956. [ 4 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 which we are trapped and are only regarded as numbers – from our social security number to our credit card numbers in today's' world, which is what ‘The Village’ was intended to represent allegorically – McGoohan’s decision to use Portmeirion as the set for The Prisoner was due to how convenient and chameleonic he found it as a place. Having already filmed in Portmeirion before in an episode for another 1960s TV spy series, Danger Man, McGoohan returned to Portmeirion because the truly unique aesthetic of the village suggested a total design built under the quest of creating a controlled fantasy, perhaps even an attempt to criticize Fig. 4. Still from The Prisoner, ‘Fall out’ (Episode 17) (3:42). Disneyland (he had worked for Disney in two different films) as a site criticized even then Portmeirion has certainly received a lot of for its use of fantastical architecture and publicity from the film industry over the years, landscaping as control mechanisms.3 ever since an adaptation in 1960 of H. G. Wells’ novel Kipps by Granada Television, being the first production to take place on the site. Williams-Ellis, reflecting in 1973 about the village’s growth and impact since its 3 See The Three Lives of Thomasina (1963) and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963). [ 5 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 inauguration, acknowledged that such productions a ‘Home for Fallen Buildings’; a ‘touristic had a strong impact on how its creation is destination and beautiful pocket of madness’; or perceived: merely the filming for The Prisoner. Instead, by taking into account the long career of Clough ‘…though it is important for its survival Williams-Ellis, along with his publications and that Portmeirion should be thus practice, this thesis will examine the economically viable and socially relationship between these rival narratives and acceptable; my main objective, that of the historical contexts from which they emerge. architectural and environmental Sources will also include his autobiographies, propaganda, is by no means thereby which instead of being viewed as a questionable obscured, diminished or deflected by these data source, will be relied upon, as David incidental ‘side-effects’, but thereby Carlson explains, to reveal the personality of made the more effective and more likely to an author and the process in which an individual be lasting.’4 makes sense of his or her own experience.5 The originality of this research derives from Indeed, Williams-Ellis’s main objective has not been totally obscured over time. Yet today, the direct experience and hence ‘situated however, Portmeirion is usually confined into knowledge' obtained during my field research in three different narratives alien to the broader Portmeirion in June 2019.6 As such, a subjective architectural discourse in Britain: it is either study of this site will be rooted in both my 4 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, Routledge Guides to Using Historical (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 87. Sources (London; New York: Routledge, 2009), 177. 5 David Carlson, “Autobiography,” in Reading Primary Sources: The 6 Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History, ed. and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 581, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066. [ 6 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018 position as an academic researcher and as an Disney holiday resort and home of The Prisoner international tourist whose first encounter with – is left behind, and now instead before us the site was through digital media. Therefore, stands a seaside architectural collection that the thesis will adopt a narrative mode of is worthy of further architectural study. ‘creative-writing’ in which both the creative and experiential, and critical and self- reflecting perspectives, will be mediated to build up an alternative reading of Portmeirion in which its eccentric and individualistic character is challenged and replaced by a new interpretation in which the village figures as a response to the changing politics and landscape of the early-twentieth century particularly in – terms of the development of British seaside tourist resorts.7 The structure of this thesis is hence that of a physical and metaphorical journey.