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.

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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

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Fig. 1. Transcript from ‘Mini-Stories: Volume 5’ (Episode 333), a podcast by 99%

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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.

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Fig. 2. Still from The Prisoner, ‘Arrival’ (Episode 1) (2:47).

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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. It reflects the way in which not only the author and reader travel across Britain in order to visit the village and truly experience it, but also as a journey through time after which the Portmeirion we first encounter at the beginning of our journey – a Disney-before-

7 Jane Rendell, “Introduction. Architecture-Writing,” in Critical Architecture, ed. Jane Rendell et al., Critiques, v. 1 (London; New York: Routledge, 2007), 88.

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Fig. 5. Stills from Danger Man, ‘View from the Villa’ (Episode 1). Portmeirion as an Italian village (17:28) left and Battery Square, Portmeirion, adapted for the scene (17:47) bottom. (17:47) right.

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Portmeirion when compared to the real ones in the 1930s visitor guides but they also learn Provenance – about some of the ideas behind Williams-Ellis’ May 2019, London architectural vision, mainly his tenet that

Portmeirion has featured as the backdrop in ‘exploitation need not mean spoliation’: numerous fictional dramas, written and filmed, ‘Tell me about this Portmeirion – it’s not as either part of the plot or just as a filming really a proper place, is it? location. One that particularly struck me was ‘It’s whatever you want it to be. That’s Fear in The Sunlight, a 2012 novel and fourth its beauty.’ book in Nicola Upson’s ongoing fictional mystery ‘But a private village created entirely by series. In this book the main character, one man? Isn’t that a little strange?’ Josephine Tey, returns as the heroine and detective for a murder that takes place in …The village might have been created by Portmeirion in 1936 whilst she is celebrating one man, but it’s founded entirely on the her fortieth birthday and negotiating the film belief that beauty can make people’s lives rights of her novel A Shilling for Candles with better. In Portmeirion, Clough Williams- , Alfred Hitchcock. What the ‘Master of Suspense’ Ellis found a landscape that was beautiful makes this novel different is the fact that already and used his imagination to Upson acknowledges the village and its creator, improve it; that’s a tremendous Clough Williams-Ellis, throughout the story of achievement, so no – I don’t think it’s the murder. Readers are not only given a 1936 strange.’8 plan of the village – which accurately portrays

8 Nicola Upson, Fear in the Sunlight (London: Faber, 2012), 5.

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Thus, Upson uses Tey with words to explain that Clough Williams-Ellis created an architectural

resort ‘driven by a passion for the landscape of North Wales’, thereby turning wilderness into what appears to be a displaced Italian hill town.9 Despite the fact that Upson describes the colorful and theatrical ideals and aesthetics of

the place, she fails to mention two of Clough’s central purposes: to introduce and give a sense of pleasure in architecture to the visiting

public, and to use design to prove that ‘good architectural manners were also good

10 business.’ Upson instead focuses on the village’s physical descriptions to highlighting the eccentric aspect of the village, its remote and beautiful location, and its bizarre creator

– a would-be savior and protector of the countryside. If these are the main reasons why both Portmeirion and Clough Williams-Ellis seem to inspire many fictional narrations, the very opposite is the case within British

Fig. 6. Plan on Nicola Upson’s Fear in the Sunlight top and plan architectural history. As Richard Haslam puts from Portmeirion c. 1935 bottom.

9 Upson, Fear in the Sunlight, 411. 10 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion Further Explained with yet More Pictures, ed. Noel Carrington (Birmingham: The Kynoch Press, 1932), 12.

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it, Williams-Ellis ‘came to be omitted from at least one standard text on the British twentieth

11 century.’ Even though in the last decade some new studies have been published that take Portmeirion and Clough Williams-Ellis as their principal object of study, these belong to the academic field of Geography, in regard to rural development, and as such do not yet portray a wider picture of the context in which the village came to be built and developed.12 The gaiety of Portmeirion is usually misunderstood within architectural history as being ‘an extravagant caprice’, and thus to understand it better, one needs first to look at its creator because, as he explained himself: ‘[Portmeirion] is so much more me than anything else I have

13 built elsewhere.’

11 Richard Haslam and Clough Williams-Ellis, Clough Williams-Ellis, RIBA and Protests of Clough Williams-Ellis,” in Rural Modernity in Britain: A Critical Drawings Monographs, no. 2 (London: Academy Editions, 1996), 14. Intervention, ed. Kristin Bluemel and Michael McCluskey (Edinburgh: 12 See Pyrs Gruffudd, “‘Propaganda for Seemliness’: Clough Williams-Ellis and Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Portmeirion, 1918-1950,” Ecumene, October 1995; Nigel G Harrison, 13 Clough Williams-Ellis, The Architect by Clough Williams-Ellis., Life and “‘Architect Errant’: A Critical Study of the Work and Legacy of Clough Work Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929), 180; Clough Williams-Ellis, Williams-Ellis.” (PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2014); Nigel G Around the World in Ninety Years (Portmeiron: Golden Dragon, 1978), 96. Harrison and Iain Robertson, “Beyond Portmeirion: The Architecture, Planning

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Fig. 7. Clough Williams-Ellis in the Grotto, Portmeirion (Courtesy of Portmeirion Ltd.)

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Architect Errant, Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis just three months – something that made him May 2019, RIBA, London proud in its comparison to the mere three weeks that Sir Edwin Lutyens had lasted there.15 Self- From researching into Clough Williams-Ellis, it taught, and starting instead his career with a becomes evident that he was and continues to be commission to design a charitable institution near Oxford in 1905, Williams- practice considered an unconventional ‘architectural Ellis’s grew and developed over the years using a jester’ for a variety of reasons: his characteristic unusual fashion sense; his light- variety of styles in his buildings ranging from hearted and witty manner of expression; his vernacular Arts-and-Crafts – as influenced by often curious interests and publications; and William Morris – and morphing gradually into mainly his magpie architectural education and Neo-Classical and Modern after the First World practice separated by two world wars. Williams- War. This variety not only illustrates that his Ellis had spent less than a year at Cambridge clientele principally consisted of upper-middle- University at the turn of the twentieth century class clients, or ‘like-minded people’ as Williams-Ellis referred to them, but a mixture before realizing that ‘the old architectural 14 that Portmeirion would later be known for a itch was back again in an aggravated form.’ – Pursuing his passion, he decided to enroll in place that, in the eyes of Alan Powers, makes the first architecture school he found in the Williams-Ellis a ‘proto-postmodernist’ due to 16 telephone book, namely the Architectural the village’s ‘light-hearted eclecticism.’ Association, which he however abandoned after

14 Clough Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant (Portmeirion: Portmeirion, 1991), 61. Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention, ed. Kristin Bluemel and Michael 15 Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant, 73. McCluskey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 198. 16 Nigel G Harrison and Iain Robertson, “Beyond Portmeirion: The Architecture, Planning and Protests of Clough Williams-Ellis,” in Rural

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Fig. 8. Clough Williams-Ellis’ various designs for commissions from 1905 to 1941. (Adapted from Haslam, Richard, and Clough Williams-Ellis. Clough Williams-Ellis. RIBA Drawings Monographs).

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Because of his individuality, Williams-Ellis was private party. As however, he seemed to be mostly disregarded by other practitioners at the increasingly accepted by the public and by time. This however this did not bother him that the media as a perfectly serious much as he felt strongly about his own aesthetic ‘professional’ and soon even welcomed as a decisions, a particular taste he started to rising new light in the then somewhat dim develop aged 6 years old when apparently he architectural horizon, he was eventually

17 first started ‘worshipping Architecture.’ In and most generously welcomed unto the the obituary he wrote for himself for his official fold. Amongst its established autobiography, Around the World in Ninety Years – leaders, there was only one with whom he comparing himself again to Lutyens and found himself in almost total and abiding mentioning that he was one of his main accord, and that was Edwin Lutyens, who architectural influences and indeed ‘guiding had always contrived to keep himself out star’ – Williams-Ellis argued that he had of the professional fishpond, to the eventually become an important figure within the immeasurable loss of its less gifted British architectural realm:18 occupants.19

[He] was resented by the already The factor that changed the perception of fellow established practitioners (none of them he architects about Williams-Ellis was his knew, nor they him) as being as unseemly campaigning work during the 1920s and 1930s an intrusion as would be an outsider aimed towards preserving the British countryside

imprudently gate-crashing an intimate against the threats of ‘jerry-building and

17 Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant, 9. 19 Williams-Ellis, Around the World in Ninety Years, 125. 18 Clough Williams-Ellis, Around the World in Ninety Years (Portmeiron: Golden Dragon Books, 1978), 96.

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20 ribbon development.’ This was manifested in Yet even though Williams-Ellis mounted a his best-known book, England and the Octopus prolific and successful campaign through his (1928), the crowning jewel of his advocacy for numerous publications and speeches, he still town planning and building conservation. Even felt that something was missing. ‘I began to before this publication, he campaigned along feel increasingly that to say what I had to say with the ‘Seven Knights Errant’ – as he called in words was not enough’, he noted. ‘Ought it Patrick Geddes, Raymond Unwin, Charles Reilly, not to be possible to use the mode of expression Guy Dawber, Lawrence Weaver, Patrick that came most naturally to me, actual building, Abercrombie, and Herbert Griffin, all important to show an example, a life-size model, which figures in the town planning movement – and was would surely be both more eloquent and more 22 an active member of the Council for the convincing than mere writing?’ Building was Preservation of Rural England (CPRE), the what came most naturally to Williams-Ellis, not National Trust, the Society for the Protection writing. As his wife Amabel née Strachey of Ancient Buildings, and the Design and observed, ‘his impulse all his life was to make Industries Association (DIA, later succeeding something tangible’. Thus, whilst juggling his Lawrence Weaver as president in 1929), for which architectural practice, his campaign for the he directed the publication of a series of preservation of the countryside, and his

‘Cautionary Guides’ in order to put into shame personal life, from 1925 onwards Williams- banal efforts at street furniture, advertising, Ellis’s battle incorporated a new element that and gardening.21 would become a practical demonstration of seemly and sympathetic development: Portmeirion.

20 Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant, 138. 22 Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant, 138. 21 Clough Williams-Ellis, The Architect by Clough Williams-Ellis., Life and Work Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929), 138.

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Fig. 9. The Central Piazza at Portmeirion.

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‘Propaganda for Seemliness’ May 2019, V&A Museum, London

Given the long development of Portmeirion – now more than half a century because of some additions after his death – and above all the curious looks of the place, Clough Williams- Ellis accepted that if he was going to be remembered for something, it would be for this experimental development on the estuary of the River Dwyryd in North Wales. After examining Fig. 10. Preliminary design for Portmeirion, Merioneth, c. 1925. some of his architectural drawings in Richard

Haslam’s monograph, I decided to study them myself. The collection by Williams-Ellis that are owned by the RIBA at the V&A Museum – the majority of them being drawings for other commissions – are only those that managed to survive a 1951 fire in his home at Plas Brondanw in Gwynedd, North Wales. Nonetheless, the collection held what I was looking for, the 1925 preliminary design for Portmeirion. This early drawing (along with a plasticine model that perished in the fire) is among the earliest representations of the village. Fig. 11. Revised sketch model of the central feature at Portmeirion, Merioneth, c. 1920s. [ 18 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Even though the buildings seem to float on the for the 2019 MET Gala – it is not in fact a linen page without a particular site in mind, disengaged and unserious artifice, as Susan they have Mediterranean feel to them that was Sontag defined the term ‘camp’ back in 1964, but inspired by Portofino, a city that Williams- rather an architectural project full of content. Ellis had visited with Geoffrey Scott before the The lifelong campaign by Williams-Ellis for the First World War. Most importantly, what these preservation of the countryside and the early sketches demonstrate is Williams-Ellis’s provision instead of seemly design were interest in grouping buildings, a concept fundamental part of its conception, to the point characteristic of the Italian coastal towns, of including advertisements in Portmeirion’s where, in Haslam’s words, ‘architecture works as first visitor's guides encouraging guests to a mediating element between sea and land, both join in his campaign.25 Furthermore, for

23 visually and functionally.’ Williams-Ellis the village had several serious purposes that justified this risky commercial

Today, if you look you look up ‘Portmeirion’ on development, and which are worth quoting at full Google you will notice that the village has length: maintained its intended aesthetic, one 'where the architecture has been allowed the license I wanted to show that one could develop that the strangely exotic flavour of its whole even a beautiful site without defiling it

24 setting seemed to warrant.’ As a ‘camp’ group and indeed, given sufficient sympathy and of buildings surrounded by a Welsh landscape of skill, one might even enhance what nature around 70 acres of woodlands – an ideal venue had provided as your background. Second, I

23 Richard Haslam and Clough Williams-Ellis, Clough Williams-Ellis, RIBA 25 “Susan Sontag: Notes On ‘Camp,’” accessed August 8, 2019, Drawings Monographs, no. 2 (London: Academy Editions, 1996), 88. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html. 24 Clough Williams-Ellis Portmeirion Explained: Essays by Several Hands with Pictures, ed. Noel Carrington (Birmingham: The Kynoch Press, 1929), 14.

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was saddened at finding so many people architect and client, he decided to make of missing the intense interest and enjoyment Portmeirion a luxury seaside resort. Since its to be gained from an appreciation of opening in Easter 1926 as an unlicensed hotel architecture, landscape, design, the use with inadequate equipment, untrained staff, and

of colour and perspectives, and indeed of allegedly ‘terrible food’, the village today – the environmental art generally – often, I leaving behind this rough start – continues as found, because they were shy of thriving four-star holiday resort and touristic technicalities – so I sought to provide an site praised for its exotic and fantastical easy, gay, sort of ‘light-opera’ approach looks. Howerver it is important to note that to these seeming mysteries, that would not Portmeirion was not in fact the first pre-Disney frighten them off but entice them into holiday resort built in Britain: a decade before

interest, criticism and finally enjoyment. Williams-Ellis’s first drawings, a purpose-built Finally, having seen so many potentially village called Thorpeness, which was themed hopeful projects fail to fulfil their around Peter Pan, and Treasure Island began promoter’s hopes and promises through operation, even if, unlike Portmeirion, it

architectural and planning ineptitude – I failed to sustain its promoter’s hopes and later hoped to suggest that architectural good became criticized for having wasted the manners can mean good business.’26 opportunities its attractive that a coastal site had to offer. In order to maintain and finance his experiment in ‘Owner-Development’, which is the way in which Williams-Ellis took on the split roles of

26 Clough Williams-Ellis, Around the World in Ninety Years (Portmeiron: Golden Dragon Books, 1978), 96.

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Fig. 12. Final pages in the visitor’s guide, Portmeirion Explained with Pictures, inviting readers to join the CPRW.

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Fig. 13. Aerial views of Thorpeness, Suffolk. Photograph taken in 1929 left and aerial view today right.

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Barrie-Land-On-Sea attract habitual visitors, among the first being May 2019, London Lady Emily Lutyens, who visited with her children while her husband was away working on The continuing development during the Late New Delhi – making of Thorpeness a sort of Victorian and Edwardian era of picturesque extended residential club for upper-middle-class villages, despite the growing shift towards Londoners.28 public responsibility in providing working-class housing, reveals that private commissions did not stop being built. Of these, the tourist village at Thorpeness stands out because of its architectural eccentricity and novelty. Often referred to as ‘Portmeirion’s precursor’, since it opened in June 1913, Thorpeness was less of a didactic and propagandistic exercise than a

‘children’s paradise for make-believe’, as described in the 1925 advertisement in The Times. It was aimed at the children of wealthy parents and as such adapted the literary works of J. M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll for its design and marketing strategies.27 Over time the village started to Fig. 14. 1925 advertisement for Thorpeness in The Times.

27 “Multiple Display Advertisements.,” Times, April 17, 1925, The Times Digital 28 Clive Aslet, “Peter Pan’s Concrete Home: Thorpeness, Suffolk,” Country Life, Archive. April 22, 1982, 1102; Gillian Darley, “Concerning Thorpeness,” Architectural Review 159, no. 949 (March 1976), 183.

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Fig. 15. Map of The Meare at Thorpeness from a 1930s guidebook. Its islands are named after locations from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

Thorpeness was founded on a 6,000-acre abandoned playwright. Ogilvie, who wanted to return the fishing hamlet without any infrastructure and life back to the area after the farmworkers had little vegetation on the east coast of Suffolk, moved away, figured that the fastest way to do having been inherited in 1908 by Glencairn this would be to turn the place into a hybrid of Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister and estate village and fantasy resort development,

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inspired by a dramatic flooding on the site in

1910. He therefore created ‘The Meare’, a 64- acre shallow lake for children to play in islands with props such as the ‘Pirates' Lair’, ‘Wendy's House’, ‘Crocodile Island’, and ‘Peter 29 Pan's Island.’ This strong focus on making Thorpeness a ‘children’s paradise’ makes evident that, in contrast, Portmeirion was not specifically aimed at youngsters, but rather for

‘acceptable and discerning people’ of all ages. Even though in both places the line between what is fake and what is real seems to vanish, as seen not only in their attempts to disguise infrastructure but also in their turn to Fig. 16. Photographs from some of the landings at ‘The Meare’ showing locations traditional architectural styles (mock-Tudor in named after Peter Pan. Thorpeness and eclectic Arts-and-Crafts in Portmeirion) rather the more modern style that as Portmeirion was, was the result of three several seaside resorts were already doing in figures: Stuart Ogilvie along with the the early-twentieth century, their designs were architects F. Forbes-Glennie and W. William developed in two completely different ways. Gilmour Wilson, in a minor role. Ogilvie seemed Thorpeness, instead of being the work of one man to share Clough Williams-Ellis’s view of seemly

29 Louise Chadwick, “Thorpeness, a Short Centenary History,” Aldringham-cum- Thorpe, accessed July 24, 2019, http://aldringham.onesuffolk.net/parish-past- and-present/thorpeness-a-short-centenary-history/.

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design, in wishing to develop the site without liquidation and sold off its assets – only ‘The 31 ruining it: ‘I am not a common property Meare’ was kept by the Ogilvie family. developer ... If I were, I would simply cover the ground with hideous monstrosities such as we see all too frequently elsewhere – and doubtless make a fortune in so doing.’ Yet the lack of a cohesive plan for Thorpeness, along with its growing popularity eventually caused the place to eventually fall victim to the ‘bungalow virus’, the title for Williams-Ellis’s most feared rural disease. As described by Ogilvie’s granddaughter in her book One Man’s Dream, houses began to be built without following the architectural plan, whilst ‘some should have 30 never been allowed to be built at all.’ Moreover, after Stuart Ogilvie passed away, his grandson Glen Ogilvie came to run the village and in the 1970s, due to the poor condition of the estate, death duties for around £1 million, and numerous other debts and financial commitments, Thorpeness Ltd fell into voluntary Fig. 17. Thorpeness’ original masterplan showing the location of Tinkers Inn.

30 Ailsa Ogilvie de Mille, One Man’s Dream: The Story Behind G. Stuart Ogilvie 31 Ogilvie de Mille, , One Man’s Dream, 96. and the Creation of Thorpeness (Toftwood: Nostalgia, 1996), 96.

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[ 27 ] Fig. 18. Plans of Thorpeness over the years, 1904 top, 1927 middle and 1970s Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Thorpeness’s development over the years thus ‘exploitation need not necessarily mean disregarded the essential role that the site spoliation’ and that it is indeed possible ‘to needed to play, meaning that this extraordinary enhance the beauty of a site by building enterprise and a uniquely imaginary concept came appropriately’, remained evident in the 32 to be drowned by inferior housing additions. village’s growth throughout the years. On the contrary, Portmeirion has continued to Portmeirion’s unique respect for its natural grow as a tourist resort catering to an setting is certainly one of the reasons why, to increasing number of guests by being based upon this day, the village remains such a successful a ‘procedure' referred to as ‘pegging out’, this holiday resort, a explained by Williams-Ellis in being the interpretation by Williams-Ellis of his various guidebooks for visitors:

Patrick Geddes’ concept of ‘conservative surgery’. Following this process, Williams-Ellis ‘... the many loggias and belvederes ... first built ‘dominant structures’ or highlights gardens and terraces and flights of steps such as the Campanile, the Watch-House and the to pools and fountains, its architectural Chantry, with these being later linked by other bridges and miniature harbour works and

33 ‘subsidiary’ buildings. By committing to this lighthouse...they are essential and method, Williams-Ellis developed the village integral parts of the whole scheme, and it slowly, adding piece by piece, and maintaining is because of them and the natural the natural vegetation and the existing amenities that they have sought to buildings on site – a principle that he emphasise and set off, however considered even in the car park’s design. As a result, Portmeirion’s aim, which is that

32 “Concerning Thorpeness,” Architectural Review 159, no. 949 (March 1976), 33 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition 185. (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 26.

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inadequately, that the place is so well esteemed and therefore prosperous.’34

Fig. 19. Plan of Portmeirion before Clough Williams’ Ellis intervention, c. 1840s.

34 Clough Williams-Ellis, The Architect by Clough Williams-Ellis., Life and Work Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929), 180.

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Fig. 20. Plans of Portmeirion’s growth from 1920s to 1980s. On this page: 1920s top,

[ 30 ] 1930s bottom. Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Fig. 20. Plans of Portmeirion’s growth from 1920s to 1980s. On this page: 1950s [ 31 ] top, 1960s bottom. Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Fig. 20. Plans of Portmeirion’s growth from 1920s to 1980s. On this page: 1970s top,

[ 32 ] 1980s bottom. Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Realization The move to the seaside for holiday was first 2 June 2019, London started in the eighteenth century by physicians who argued for the medical properties of Having studied Portmeirion through books and seawater, among them Dr Richard Russel. His other media it is time for me to visit the site, claim that bathing in seawater was beneficial for one's health, particularly the water near since ‘the whole idea of the experiment is that it should be carefully and critically studied on Brighton, was part of the changing attitudes towards nature, thereby transforming what had the spot, not merely written about’, as Clough Williams-Ellis emphatically stated. Looking at previously been a fishing hamlet into a holiday the people that are also waiting for their destination. This pattern was something that trains at Euston Station makes the purpose of others followed across Britain such as Dr John traveling to North Wales on a Sunday morning Grigor who established Nairn in Scotland as a rather specific, given that clearly the majority touristic village.35 Even though an assumption of them are traveling to places to relax and about the healing potential of the seaside was enjoy. While this journey for some might share still used as an argument for visiting it well the late-eighteenth-century romantic notion of into the twentieth century – aided by the claim seeking refuge from the city life in the that ‘...sunlight is Nature’s universal contemplation of nature, in actuality the disinfectant’, as argued by C. W. Saleeby, conception of the seaside beach as a prime site founder of the Sunlight League in 1924 – the of leisure and pleasure is deeply linked to the modern notion of the pleasurable seaside was in development of commercial tourist resorts. fact developed during the late-nineteenth

35 “Nairn History and Information,” Scottish Accommodation Index, accessed August 3, 2019, https://www.scottishaccommodationindex.com/nairnpics.htm.

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century when rail transport became available to commercialized context of social, political, and most classes of city dwellers and proscribed technological changes that were driving tourism holidays were handed to industrial workers in Britain at the time. As Williams-Ellis

36 through the 1871 Bank Holiday Act. explained, to create Portmeirion it ‘required (besides me and my dream) capital, the Begun during the 1920s as the vision of an appropriate site and a vivifying principle, a alternative village created by an architect with use, a job, that would make and keep it viable. left-leaning ideologies and a strong involvement As its setting had above all to be outstandingly in rural preservation, Portmeirion might also beautiful and coastal, tourism seemed to be the seem be a successor (or rather an eccentric industry upon which it would probably have

37 variant) to the late-nineteenth century chiefly to depend for its livelihood’. revolutionary socialist colonies such as Edward

Carpenter’s Millthorpe – which greatly influenced figures such as the renowned architect and town planner, Raymond Unwin, to support ideals like the back-to-the-land and simple-life movements, subsequently incorporated into his housing designs and publications. But although Williams-Ellis certainly shared some socialist beliefs, Portmeirion’s conception and development certainly revolved around the

36 Joan Ormond, “Middle Class Pleasures and the Safe Dangers of Surf Bathing (Eastbourne: Leisure Studies Association, 2004), 98; Ormond, “Leisure, Media on the English South Coast 1921-1937,” in Leisure, Media and Visual Culture: and Visual Culture.”, 87, Representations and Contestations, ed. Eileen Kennedy and Andrew Thornton 37 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 13-14.

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Flight to the coast 2 June 2019, Shrewsbury

After a somewhat eventful journey to Wales, which included mis-labeled trains and having to change trains twice because one of them broke down in Shrewsbury, I noticed that I was standing just five miles away from the parish of

Atcham where ‘The Mytton and Mermaid’ is located. Clough Williams-Ellis owned this hotel, a former Georgian coaching inn, from 1932 to around 1950. After he opened it to the public on June 1932, it served as a useful staging post to attract Londoners to travel to Portmeirion, which reflected how the new forms of road transport, such as charabancs, coaches, and cars, were not only changing the pattern of travel to holiday destinations but also extending the reach of tourism, thereby ‘taking holidaymakers into every corner of the country, beyond where railways had previously gone’, as Fig. 21. Advertisement for ‘The Mytton and Mermaid’ hotel in one Allan Brodie notes.38 of Portmeirion’s visitors guide.

38 Allan Brodie, Tourism and the Changing Face of the British Isles (Swindon: Historic England, 2019), 70.

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During the 1840s, the new railway lines had Saltdean Lido, BlackPool Pleasure Beach Casino, boosted seaside resorts by making the journeys Midland Hotel at Morecambe, among others. faster, cheaper and more affordable, attracting Observing the popularity that such developments the working and lower-middle classes to new had in ‘pleasing God and the millions’, Clough developments such as Blackpool, Brighton, Williams-Ellis instead decided to ‘disagree with 40 Skegness, and Clacton – places that were them’ and please only himself. Despite previously reserved to the wealthiest members of Portmeirion being considered as a place ‘not society. Travel to these coastal retreats, suited to the tastes or habits of the majority’, usually located far away from major cities, and it still provided a site where families could their strong contrast with the environments of celebrate and enjoy the seaside life along with industrial cities, served to reinforce the sense healthy outdoor activities, serving as an that these resorts were places of escape – a example of high quality of life during the quality that later adoption of Modern inter-war and post-war decades.41 Moreover,

Architecture as the characteristic style of Williams-Ellis further emphasized the village’s seaside holiday resorts would highlight during singularity by explaining that ‘Portmeirion is the inter-war period.39 The eclecticism of not a public resort, but a little settlement on styles found at the Late Victorian and Edwardian a private peninsula at the head of Tremadoc Bay, seaside shifted towards a mixture of Art Deco protected from mainland and the outer world

42 and Modernism during the 1920s and 1930s, as generally by its own gate-house and toll bar.’ seen particularly seen in recreational buildings like the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-sea,

39 Bruce Peter, Form Follows Fun: Modernism and Modernity in British 41 Alan Powers Interview, 14 June, 2019. Pleasure Architecture, 1925-1940 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 129. 42 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion Explained: Essays by Several Hands with 40 Clough Williams-Ellis, The Architect by Clough Williams-Ellis., Life and Pictures, ed. Noel Carrington (Birmingham: The Kynoch Press, 1929), 25. Work Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929), 183-84.

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Fig. 22. Postcard of the De la Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-sea top and photograph of [ 37 ] the Saltdean Lido in Brighton bottom. Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Fig. 23. Photograph of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Casino top and illustration of the Midland Hotel at Morecambe bottom.

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In being partly detached and isolated from ‘all particular way either in the valley or on 43 outside interference’, contrary to other the cliff top [sic]. traditional examples, Portmeirion’s uniqueness came from the strong relationship with the site The reciprocity between site and architecture as explained by an up-and-coming British that Fry identified at Portmeirion is what architect, Maxwell Fry: Williams-Ellis hoped others would seek to achieve when building other settlements. First ‘In so many ways is Port Meririon [sic] an intended as a lesson, his notion of developing a unbelievable and enchanted place, and in beautiful site without running it was turned nothing are you reminded of a vulgar world into an attack against bungalow colonies outside. There are no advertisements of scattered along the countryside and coastline. anything; no notices direct you to the Examples of the latter communities, such as obvious woods; there is no promenade; Peacehaven in East Sussex, and Jaywick in Essex there are no charabancs; no garish petrol were developed after families who could not pumps, and nothing that detracts from the afford to stay in a hotel or a boarding house natural beauty of the scene. Rather the decided instead to build their own shanties and reverse, for it is from the combination of shacks closer to their homes. Over time, these

the architecture with its setting that the wooden structures – first intended as summer and charm of a local atmosphere has been weekend retreats – became permanent residences, evolved, each helping the other in its as people established smallholdings and sought to become self-sufficient.44 Intended as idyllic

43 E. Maxwell Fry, “Portmeirion,” Architects’ Journal, June 20, 1928, 875. 44 Allan R Ruff, “The Workers’ Pastoral,” in Arcadian Visions Pastoral Influences on Poetry, Painting and the Design of Landscape (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2015), 222.

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rural or coastal escapes away from the intensity of urban life, the ‘bungalow colonies’ became, along with ribbon developments, a general contributor to what Williams-Ellis considered to be the decomposition of England’s 1,800 miles of coastline.45

Fig. 24. Aerial views of Peacehaven in East Sussex c. 1920s left and Jaywick in Essex c. 1953 right.

45 Cited in Allan Brodie, Tourism and the Changing Face of the British Isles (Swindon: Historic England, 2019), 94.

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Amenity Propaganda by Charles Neville. After purchasing land from 2 June 2019, Machynlleth the Cavendish Land Company, he eventually acquired a 5-mile strip along the clifftop, During the early- twentieth century the face of extending a mile inland. Neville divided the England was changing due to the rapid urban area into multiple smaller plots and offered expansion caused both by the exodus to urban them for sale in national newspapers. However, districts and by changes in land ownership and instead of delivering the “twelve component use; the latter prompted by Liberal proposals parts of a serene and desirable state of life” – health, happiness, contentment, recreation, such as Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909. The budget introduced a form of land tax satisfaction, freedom, hope, rejuvenation, home- that caused those experiencing financial life, prosperity, peace, and a haven – that he promised, Peacehaven ended up as a mess47. difficulties – mainly farmers affected by the Neville lost control of the sale of the plots declining agricultural prices – to sell off part of their land cheaply to speculators for housing and the process became rather arbitrary, with developments.46 Some of the remaining land that many purchasers never able to take possession of did not interest housing speculators was sold their land. What started out as an attempt to impose order and a sense of planning became the off as ‘plotlands’ even though they lacked any overall planning or services, increasing the bête noire of plotland development, as recounted number of shanty developments. A notable example by Denis Hardy and Colin Ward.48 of this can be seen in Peacehaven in Sussex, a 1916 philanthropic and paternalistic initiative

46 Ruff, “The Workers’ Pastoral.”, 222-23. 48 Dennis Hardy and Colin Ward, Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift 47 Ruff, “The Workers’ Pastoral.”, 224. Landscape, Studies in History, Planning, and the Environment (London; New York: Mansell, 1984), 72.

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Several preservationists responded to the landscape deterioration of the English landscape

caused by ‘the relentless spread of and urban way of life’, by denouncing the disgraceful lack of design in the plotlands and calling instead for greater governmental control over the use of the land49. As noted by Nigel Harrison, this viewpoint corresponded to the preservationist morality of settlement and their elitist prejudices stemming from their upper-middle- class upbringings.50 Among these figures, Clough Williams-Ellis responded to unplanned development in the mid-1920s firstly by building Portmeirion and secondly by publishing his polemic book, England and The Octopus. In the latter, Williams-Ellis's reproduced a Punch cartoon of the aftermath of war which portrayed the general sentiment of betrayal felt by those who fought the First World War in vain, now that the English countryside had surrendered to the relentless urban sprawl. Fig. 25. Caricature first reproduced in Punch magazine, later used as the frontispiece of Clough Williams-Ellis’ England and the Octopus.

49 Hardy and Ward, Arcadia for All, 34. 50 Nigel G Harrison, “‘Architect Errant’: A Critical Study of the Work and Legacy of Clough Williams-Ellis.” (PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2014), 393.

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Addressing the issue of plotland developments in expert public authority so as to ensure that his chapter on “The Archfiend and the ‘the homes of the peoples are no longer Archangel”, Williams-Ellis described the sins of disfiguring eruptions on the face of the land, the housing speculator: ‘so grasping and get- but a welcome and becoming adornment, as they rich-quick were you and your associates that were in the days when England was beautiful

52 your over-stimulated goose began to pine and die because of them.’ The profound impact that after the first season’s egg-laying … You found Britain and the Beast had on post-war planning five thousand acres of Downland pasture – the contributed to public policies such as the 1946 immemorial resort of peaceful wanderers from the New Towns Act, the 1947 Town and Country adjacent towns: you left it a forlorn and Planning Act, and the 1949 National Parks and straggling camp of slatternly shacks and Access to the Countryside Act, all of them aimed gimcrack bungalows, unfinished roads, and at regulating land development and rural leisure

51 weather-beaten advertisements.’ This book was provision. Furthermore, new forms of controlled followed a decade later by Britain and the developments that centered on solving the Beast, a combined effort of various problem of scenic disorder caused by intellectuals and writers with a common desire holidaymakers were proposed: ‘more and better to protect the English countryside and its Blackpools and Brightons, and … [also] popular 53 traditions. Published in 1938, the book holiday camps’, as John Dower explains. reiterated their message for the need of a landscape that was simultaneously modern and traditional, planned under the guidance of an

51 Clough Williams-Ellis and CPRE, England and the Octopus / by Clough 52 Cited in David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, Picturing History Williams-Ellis; with a New Foreword by Jonathan Dimbleby; and an Epilogue by (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 341. Patrick Abercrombie., New ed. (London: CPRE, 1996), 66. 53 Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 341.

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Correcting and Concentrating Coastal Development ‘featureless sites’ these types of accommodation 2 June 2019, Talybont became in effect ‘leisure bubbles’ – worlds in themselves built for pleasure and happiness – Inter-war legislation such as the 1938 Holidays since they were developed as self-contained resorts, complete in themselves, with a network with Pay Act – which ensured holidays for of private roads, commercial facilities, working-class employees – and sundry planning laws led to the popularization of pioneering manicured lawns and gardens, and entertainment holiday schemes such as Caister Holiday Camp, complexes. Despite their massive impact and not only ensuring that holidaymakers could be popularity after the Second World War, by the accommodated but also offering an aesthetic 1990s many of them had closed, often leaving solution to the threat of urban sprawl.54 Yet derelict sites with decaying architecture.56 In however, as Ward and Hardy argue, these are not other cases, the decline of popular holiday really what anyone in Britain would think of on camps brought with it newer architectural developments at the British seaside, mainly in hearing the words ‘holiday camp’. Instead, what comes to mind are the large commercial camps of terms of static caravan parks such as the I the 1930s, catering for thousands of people could see through the window of my train after I rather than hundreds, and introduced to the crossed the England-Wales border, particularly holiday scene by Harry Warren, Fred Pontin, and in Talybont (see Appendix 1 for a full list). Billy Butlin, the latter businessman now epitomizing the holiday scene.55 Built on

54 Pyrs Gruffudd, “The Battle of Butlin’s: Vulgarity and Virtue on the North 56 Fred Gray, Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature (London: Wales Coast, 1939–49,” Rural History 21, no. 1 (April 2010): 77. Reaktion Books, 2006), 298. 55 Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy, Goodnight Campers! The History of the British Holiday Camp, Studies in History, Planning, and the Environment (London; New York: Mansell Pub, 1986), 55.

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Fig. 26. Photograph of standard static caravans for hire in Holiday Parks. right.

Butlin’s Pwllheli, a camp that Williams-Ellis describes, their ‘own separate geography had regretfully encouraged during the 1940s, composed by rectangular and flat-roofed box made serves as an example of this transition now that out of plastic and aluminium … with the parks in it has been taken over by Haven Holidays and total forming a disjointed and hidden linear renamed Hafan y Môr, with its host of static city held together by the closeness to the sea caravans.57 These sites, also known as holiday and web of private roads and clusters of

58 parks and holiday homes create, as Fred Gray commercial facilities.’ With over 1.1 million

57 Clough Williams-Ellis, Architect Errant (Portmeirion: Portmeirion, 1991, 245. 58 Fred Gray, Designing the Seaside, 299.

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leisure accommodation vehicles registered in

2017 – including motor-homes, touring caravans and static caravan holiday homes – the caravan parks are aimed for holidaymakers in search of their own private space rather resorts focused on a collective sense of pleasure and community, like the older holiday camps used to be.59

Despite the fact that the inter-war holiday camps and their successors worked as a solution against the spreading of the ‘visual and social disorder’ and the urbanization of the coastline, their layouts – reminiscent of the industrial factory estate or of military barracks – produced large-scale schemes with standardized architecture that failed to acknowledge and respect their setting, taking over large plots of land and exploiting these to their full capacity in catering for many thousands of visitors. As an alternative, Portmeirion’s conception as a theoretical island built for Fig. 27. Postcard and map from the 1970s of Butlinland at Clacton.

59 “Fast Facts About Caravanning in the UK,” Holiday Parks Management, March 8, 2018, https://www.holidayparksmanagement.com/2018/03/08/fast- facts-caravanning-uk/.

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visual and sensory pleasure – albeit now with an minimize the negative environmental impact of appreciable number of visitors at 200,000 a year buildings by an efficient use of materials. As a

– was developed in a sustainable way in an project, Portmeirion behaves as a ‘perfect attempt to demonstrate that ‘good architectural gentleman’ at two different scales. First, on manners were also good business.’ Williams- the local scale, the village was built in two Ellis’s notion of good manners in architecture, main phases – 1926–39 and 1954–76 – and only as expressed also in his writings, required new added buildings and other ‘non-remunerative’ buildings to behave as ‘tolerably decent structures over the years whenever this was citizens and neighbours’ by harmonizing with necessary due to tourist demand. As the their environment – a sympathetic approach scavenger architect that he was, Williams-Ellis towards existing urban and rural contexts that built the village using materials from other was perhaps influenced by Arthur Trystan demolished buildings. Along with his mason, he

Edwards’ book Good and Bad Manner in would ‘look over his dump and decide that they Architecture (1924). For the latter, good will do thus and thus in order to use up, manners in architecture referred to suitably and economically, just such materials architecture’s urban and social aspects, arguing as may be immediately available. Reinforced that buildings needed to pay due respect to each concrete, brickwork, masonry, weatherboarding, other and live together, particularly regarding slate hanging and lath, and plaster are all their façades.60 Williams-Ellis interpreted represented, as found convenient and as seemed

Edwards’ concept when designing Portmeirion by likely to best suit whatever we intended to adding to the notion of the ‘perfect neighbor’ a decidedly sustainable approach, seeking to

60 Neal Shashore, “How-Do-You-Do Domes: Conversations with Buildings,” review.com/essays/viewpoints/how-do-you-do-domes-conversations-with- Architectural Review, accessed August 15, 2019, https://www.architectural- buildings/8660787.article.

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61 construct.’ Secondly, as Portmeirion grew it development of a naturally beautiful site need 62 continually made sure to be congruous with the not lead to its defilement.’ natural setting, being willing to be assimilated by its surrounding landscape. At both scales, neither the site, with its existing buildings,

nor the ‘architectural mongrels’ designed by Williams-Ellis, diminished the beauty of either aspect, rather, their symbiotic relationship

enhanced each other, demonstrating that ‘the

Fig. 28. Aerial views of Portmeirion in 1956 left and 2018 right.

61 Clough Williams-Ellis, “Portmeirion,” The Town Planning Review 14 (1931): 62 Robin Llywelyn, Portmeirion (Llandysul: Gomer, 2005), 4. 246.

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Fig. 29. Photograph of sign at Minfffordd Station, 2 June 2019.

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Around the Village

2 June 2019, Minffordd

After about six hours of a train journey, I vividly in this case by J. M. N. Jeffries in finally arrived at Minffordd in Gwynedd, where 1931 for the Daily Mail. one of the guardians of Portmeirion picked me up and drove me to the village – a considerably less traumatic experience compared to the journey that No. 6 endured in The Prisoner. As we drove towards the village, I got the feeling that I was no longer Britain, not only because we drove past Castell Deudraeth – built in the 1850s by David Williams and restored in the 1990s, also part of Portmeirion Ltd – but also because we were later surrounded by woodlands with a variety of topical plant species such as palm trees, Campbell's magnolias, red gingers, and several species of rhododendrons that reminded me of my home in

Colombia. Arriving in Portmeirion from ‘the outside world’ is an experience reminiscent of the myth of the search for El Dorado, where at Fig. 30. Newspaper clipping from J. M. N. Jeffries’ article "The Boldest Thing in Wales the end of the quest one is presented with a is — Portmeirion." fantastical city, a treasure as described

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Once settled into my room, I wandered around the place and could not help to feeling like the village was a film studio, waiting ready for its next film. What surprised me the most was how small and bright everything was, since it did not take me more than ten minutes to walk from ‘Mermaid’ (a cottage located right in the middle of the village) to the ‘Tollgate’ at the other side of the village (see Appendix 2 for locations). The image of a pastel citadel, large enough to house an Old West town, as Portmeirion was portrayed in The Prisoner, had falsely shaped the perception I had of the place; in reality, the village is an small and

‘elegant little mouse’, as described by Clough Williams-Ellis, and far from becoming ‘an 63 unwieldy cow.’

Fig. 31. ‘Souvernirs’ from visit to Portmeirion, 3 June 2019.

63 Peter Davey, “Sir Clough Williams-Ellis Interview,” in A Continuing Experiment: Learning and Teaching at the Architectural Association, ed. James Gowan (London: Architectural Press, 1975), 134.

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A Folly Upon Folly 3 June 2019, Portmeirion

I decided that I wanted the full tourist experience, and so I joined one of the guided tours through Portmeirion. The guide explained to us who the creator of the village was, why he

had decided to build it – pointing out the history of some of the buildings as we walked

around – and, of course, he also explained the influence that The Prisoner had created, to the point of altering the original landscape and

‘vistas’ with permanent installations commemorating the series, particularly an outdoor life-size chessboard in memory of the

ninth episode in the series, titled “Checkmate”. Even though the TV series had morphed the proportions the village, it did accurately portray the sense of allusion to other places. This is a defining characteristic of seaside resorts, as Fred Gray explains, in terms of

Fig. 32. Life-size chessboard at Portmeirion top inspired on the creating fantasy architecture that was designed human chessboard of The Prisoner bottom.

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to help users believe they had travelled to alternative worlds.64

One of the first instances where seaside leisure architecture heightened the sense of being in

another place was by using ‘Orientalist’ architecture and exotic foliage both as vegetation and as motifs for columns and ceilings, as initiated at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Designed by John Nash for the Prince Regent and built from 1787 to 1823, the pavilion

features a mix of ‘Indian’ and Chinese styles. It would later influence ‘Orientalism’ in other nineteenth-century seaside structures,

particularly piers like Brighton’s West Pier and Hastings Pier, as designed by Eugenius Birch in 1866 and 1872, respectively. In Portmeirion this

notion of ‘being in another place’ is not however caused by ‘Orientalist’ architecture, Fig. 33. Seaside Orientalism. Exterior photograph of the Royal but rather from the experimentation of color, Pavilion, Brighton top and photograph of the Piers Pavilion, scale, and style that produced a resort Hastings c. 1890 bottom. aesthetically designed down to the last detail,

64 Fred Gray, Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 91.

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thereby presenting the visitor with a richly atmospheric scene around every corner – a technique that Walt Disney was to follow during the mid-1950s when designing Disneyland65. For example, Williams-Ellis south to emulate the miniature castle that housed the washrooms and latrines in one of Britain’s first holiday camps, Cunningham's Camp in Douglas, on the Isle of Man, by disguising the more functional installations through the fantastic; thus, toilets, chimneys, and the village’s electrical sub-mains station instead of being objects of our everyday life are hidden in this make- believe village (see Annex 2 for the list of buildings at Portmeirion).

65 Sarah Archer, “Designing Disneyland | Architectural Digest,” Architectural Digest, November 22, 2018, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/design-of- disneyland-book.

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Fig. 34. Miniature castle built in 1907 for the Cunningham Camp, Douglas left and some holidaymakers posing on the castle which housed the washroom and latrines right.

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Inspired by the ‘buildings and embellishments’ apparent proportions, others buildings played a that ‘showed an ebullition of architecture number of theatrical tricks by displaying false vitality as well as pretty wit’ in the 1923 windows on their façades and playing mannerist Gothenburg Exposition in Sweden, which Williams- games with their scale, as described by John Ellis visited with Lawrence Weaver, and also Cornforth pointed out, by making their arches

Claude Lovat Fraser’s bright use of color in his too low and using ultra-small statues to create designs for the 1920s production of The Beggars illusions of height and distance.67 In addition,

Opera, Portmeirion was designed along its own Portmeirion’s illusions and visual variety is ‘light-opera’ approach. The hope was to win ‘as caused not only by the stage-like settings yet uninterested and uninformed popular support dotted throughout the village, which for Alan for architecture, planning, landscaping, the use Powers makes the project resemble the type of

66 of colour and indeed for design generally.’ model village found in international Following this light-hearted method of exhibitions, but also by the presence of introducing visitors to the ‘seeming mysteries’ rescued/ re-erected buildings from elsewhere of architecture in order to ‘entice them into that over time transformed Portmeirion from an interest, criticism and finally enjoyment’, upper-middle-class holiday resort into a ‘Home Williams-Ellis ‘Clough up’ – as he named it – for Fallen Buildings’, thus sacrificing some of the buildings at Portmeirion, meaning that while its formal function as an architectural museum, some were colored in two or three shades to as Lewis Mumford observed (see Annex 3 for a suggest a more weathered look, or were painted in two contrasting colors to alter their

66 Clough Williams-Ellis, Lawrence Weaver: A Memoir, Geoffrey Bles, 1933, 67 John Cornforth, “Portmeirion Revisited (2),” Country Life, September 23, 55; Clough Williams-Ellis, The Architect by Clough Williams-Ellis., Life and 1976, RIBA, 800. For details on the colors used in the buildings in the village Work Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929), 209. see: Stephen Edwards, “The Village,” The Village (ITV Cymru Wales), https://www.itv.com/walesprogrammes/also-showing/the-village-episode-1.

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list of rescued buildings)68. Ranging from a conscious of the background, here one seventeenth-century plaster ceiling and lives in these little perching houses and mullioned windows from Emral Hall in Flintshire makes one’s own play out of the sea and to the remains of damaged stonework at mountain and idyllic surroundings. Mr Westminster Abbey, these buildings fragments Williams-Ellis's object had precisely been were incorporated and displayed in the village – to create, out of stone and concrete, a at the time a forward-looking initiative in village of that fairyland across the terms of the preservation and adaptation of footlights, where prosaic city-dwellers buildings threatened with demolition. The can take rooms, or a complete house, for overall effect that Portmeirion gives its their holiday’.69 visitors is that of a playful and theatrical place, a ‘boyhood’s dream come true’, as Portmeirion’s irony is that some of the Christopher Hussey explained: temporary and inventive solutions designed by Clough Williams-Ellis, after the lengthy ‘This fantastic acropolis is an development of the village had forced him into architect’s dream fulfilled – a glorious poverty, became permanent over time. For medley of Italy, Wales, a pirate’s lair, example, the pilasters supporting the lantern Cornwall, baroque, reason and romance. above the dome of the Pantheon were cardboard Theatrical? Why of course – but whereas cylinders that had held furnishing fabric, the scene painter does it with canvas and threated so as to be rainproof and rigid; the the actors themselves are but half lanterns of the Town Hall's and the Lighthouse

68 Alan Powers, “Happiness: The Reintegration of Architecture,” in Britain: 69 Christopher Hussey, “Large Ideas for Small Estates. Portmeirian Merioneth,” Modern Architectures in History. (Reaktion Books, 2007), 164; Clough Country Life, April 5, 1930, 502. Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 91.

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are inverted pigswill boilers; and so on. As

Arnold Rattenbury notes, ‘living – here or anywhere else – was not to be boring.’ Portmeirion was meant to be a playful and cheerful creation, mirroring Williams-Ellis’s personality and approach to his architectural practice70. The village functions as a demonstration of the playful creative artist, something that one of Clough’s dearest friends, Lewis Mumford, mentioned when describing

Williams-Ellis as ‘the very paragon of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, never more serious than when he is at play, more playful than when he is

71 serious.’

70 Arnold Rattenbury, “Come and Stay,” London Review of Books, November 71 Lewis Mumford, “Introduction,” in England and the Octopus, by Clough 27, 1997, Vol. 19 No. 23 edition. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n23/arnold- Williams-Ellis (Portmeirion: publisher not identified, 1975), ix. rattenbury/come-and-stay.

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Fig. 35. Façade of ‘Chantry’ (far left) and ‘Chantry Row’ (right) at Portmeirion. Notice, not only how color is used to divide ‘Chantry Row’ into seemingly four flats, even though it only has two. The yellow and pink are one, and the blue and green (off the photograph) are the other. Moreover, notice the false chimney that hides the real and functioning one from the public. [ 59 ] Beneficiaria COLFUTURO 2018

Portmeirion as a ‘Vivreation’ 4 June 2019, Portmeirion

Clough Williams-Ellis’s multifaceted life and career as a writer, architect, preservationist, and jester makes it seems that he rarely appeared to take himself seriously. These characteristics, as Nigel Harrison explains, are similar to that of the flâneur, an ‘inhabitant and archetype of the modern city, always

72 observing, always spectating, never still.’ This, linked with the concept of homo ludens, is for Harrison not only another fragment of

Clough’s poly-vocality but something that is also evident in Portmeirion’s fabric. Firstly, the village’s design as a whole must be understood as a performance in which colorful and deceitful buildings, such as the Campanile, became ‘dramatic gestures’ that introduced the sense of play. A second aspect that may indicate

Williams-Ellis’s homo ludens persona is the circulation pattern in Portmeirion, which Fig. 36. Dust jacket front cover of England and the Octopus (1928) by Clough Williams-Ellis.

72 Nigel G Harrison and Iain Robertson, “Beyond Portmeirion: The Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention, ed. Kristin Bluemel and Michael Architecture, Planning and Protests of Clough Williams-Ellis,” in Rural McCluskey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 187–202.

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resembles the ‘stage sets’ of landscape words, ‘the collection is a form of art as play, designers like William Kent with Picturesque a form involving the reframing of objects within vistas and private routes being offered to steer a world of attention and manipulation of

73 75 day visitors around. Although Harrison notes context.’ In this regard, Portmeirion can be that the cover of England and the Octopus serves seen as the result of Clough Williams-Ellis’s as another example of Williams-Ellis as a homo collecting over the years, a prolonged ‘play ludens – making him part of the group of English activity’ that was concerned with experimenting architects, journalists, historians and critics and inventing relationships within materials, (like John Betjeman, Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh, and in which each element of the collection and Osbert Lancaster, among others) whose witty works with others to create a new whole.76 criticism and historiography played a significant role in illustrating the reception After spending the night at the Portmeirion, I of modern architecture in the mid-1930s – he noticed that the day-trip visitors and longer failed to identify that while the incorporation ‘residents’ experience it in two different ways. of ‘fallen buildings’ and other elements in The first group usually arrives in the morning Portmeirion is an example of heritage and stays in it for a couple of hours, or commodification, they should not be seen as perhaps until the village closes for the day; as

‘souvenirs’ or objects arising out of the such they walk, eat, and in general explore the demands of nostalgia, but rather as part of a village surrounded by other visitors, tour

74 personal ‘collection’ . In Susan Stewart’s guides, and guardians. On the other hand, the

73 Harrison and Robertson, “Rural Modernity in Britain.”, 202-203. 75 Susan Stewart, “Objects of Desire,” in On Longing: Narratives of the 74 Michela Rosso, “Between History, Criticism, and Wit: Texts and Images of Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. (Durham: Duke English Modern Architecture (1933-36),” Journal of Art Historiography, no. 14 University Press, 2012), 151, (2016): 1. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=3007893. 76 Stewart, “On Longing.”, 153.

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‘residents’ or guests who stay even for one ‘The place is made for people isn’t it? Or night at Portmeirion, by experiencing the you’re going to have a haunted, deserted village after everyone but the hotel's staff village, which is not good. It might be have left, realize that it is only when the beautiful if you came along and discovered place is inhabited during the day that it comes it or anything, but you need people … you to life. As Williams-Ellis explained, the need people to make the place come

78 ‘colourful movement up and down the flights of alive!’ steps and along the vistas is definitely essential … this artificial landscape is only 77 alive and meaningful when it is being used.’ In this view, what makes Portmeirion what it is are not just the eccentric and colorful buildings, and the surrounding woodlands, but also the people who visit and stay in the village. It is an idea shared by Rhian, the head housekeeper of the hotel and guardian of the village for 22 years, who mentions that:

77 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition 78 Stephen Edwards, “The Village,” The Village (ITV Cymru Wales), accessed (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 10. April 30, 2019, https://www.itv.com/walesprogrammes/also-showing/the-village- episode-1.

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Fig. 37. Photographs of the ‘Central Piazza’ at Portmeirion, taken on 3 June 2019, at 2:43 PM left and 3 June 2019, at 5:55 PM right.

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‘something to dream about whenever there was Portmeirion, the result of the role of Williams- time to dream at all’. He stressed this to ‘the Ellis’s as architect and propagandist, was to an radioactive F.Ll.W.’ – i.e. Frank Lloyd Wright – extent influenced not only by Edwin Lutyens’ when the latter visited the village on a trip to imaginative designs but also by the latter’s Britain in 1956. This visit by Wright was beliefs in the pleasures of architecture both something that Williams-Ellis boasted about in solemn and light-hearted, as John Cornforth several publications to follow, saying that he pointed out.79 The village, if seen as the shared with Wright a passage from Don Marquis

‘happy background’ to Williams-Ellis’s ‘general that stated that ‘the purpose of the Universe is 81 architectural activity in the outer world’, can Play.’ The design for Portmeirion, when taking thus be compared to Edwin Lutyens ‘vivreations’, into account that Williams-Ellis’s career was his word for describing all enlivening, light- predicated on working for a wider community, can hearted activities such as dancing, singing, be understood as the architect acting as a joking, and making drawings to amuse all ages – detached flâneur, as mentioned before, but a pleasure that he also found in the process of rather as a flâneur whose play, as Zygmunt Bauman designing the nursery floor in the Viceroy’s notes, ‘is to make others play, to see others as House in New Delhi in 1912 and his Queen Mary’s players, to make the world as play … one may 80 Dolls’ House, built from 1921 to 1924. say: the job of the flâneur is to rehearse the 82 Portmeirion came to be Williams-Ellis’s world as a theatre, life as a play’ . Viewed ‘vivreation’, since its ‘fun element’ made it from this perspective, the experience of

79 John Cornforth, “Portmeirion Revisited (1),” Country Life, September 16, 81 Letter to Mrs. K. Franks letter. 28 Sept 1977 (C1/9. / Letters (1977-1978), 1976, RIBA, 729. NLW Archive); Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 46. 80 Edwin Landseer Lutyens et al., Lutyens, the Work of the English Architect Sir 82 Alan Powers interview. June 14, 2019; Zygmunt Bauman, “Desert Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944): Hayward Gallery London SE1, 18 November Spectacular,” in The Flâneur, ed. Keith Tester (London; New York: Routledge, 1981-31 January 1982 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1981), 201. 1994), 145-46.

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Portmeirion involves us in it more than what we planning could be exciting, 'gay, and colourful' are really aware of, something that Hans George on the large scale, but most important of all,

Gadamer’s theorizes about the character of play it could bring its designers and users joy in in the work of art when he suggests that both the smallest of details, as Williams-Ellis and the game and the artwork ‘are forms of self- his wife described in their 1924 book on The movement which require that the spectator play Pleasure of Architecture: 84

83 along with what they bring into being’. Therefore, it is by playing – in other words, by ‘An architect has strange pleasures. He interacting and establishing a dialectic [sic] will lie awake listening to the dialogue with the place – that the actors storm in the night and think how the rain (visitors, ‘residents’, guardians, buildings), is beating on his roofs, he will see the the players, and the architect’s intentions are sun return and will think that it was just drawn together, thus promoting an interactive for such sunshine that his shadow-throwing view of Portmeirion as a communicative event. mouldings were made.85

By creating Portmeirion’s unique aesthetic, Williams-Ellis aimed to show and demonstrate that architecture can be a form of art able to satisfy those who practice it through an unconventional method. Architecture and town

83 Nicholas Davey, “Gadamer’s Aesthetics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of 84 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion Still Further Illustrated and Explained with Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Fresh Words and yet Bigger and Better Pictures, Nineteenth Edition Stanford University, 2016), (Birmingham: The Kynoch Press, 1969), 7. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/gadamer-aesthetics/. 85 Clough Williams-Ellis and Amabel Williams-Ellis, The Pleasures of Architecture (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924), 102.

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Fig. 38. Photograph of morning visitors at ‘Battery Square’, Portmeirion, taken on 3 June 2019, at 2:42 PM.

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Conclusion should be possible to develop even a very beautiful place without thereby spoiling it; to

This thesis looked at the history behind Clough demonstrate that ‘architectural good manners are , and to show Williams-Ellis’s lifelong project at also ultimately, good business’ Portmeirion. It is a site whose characteristic ‘what exciting fun and even town-planning could aesthetic and unique setting established the be – how gay and how colourful’ – must be seen place as a pre-Disneyland hotel disconnected not only as a demonstration that humanity and from reality, a perspective that was further nature could coexist, and not to be viewed in strengthened by TV series like The Prisoner. It opposition, but also that architecture should be is by considering not only at the changing a collaborative practice that, as Christopher politics and landscapes of the twentieth-century Hussey mentions, ought to be able to ‘give in which Portmeirion developed, but also pleasure to others, "vivid pleasure, playful 87 Williams-Ellis’s ideas and project, that it can pleasure, romantic pleasure, and comfort.’ be demonstrated that ‘for fantastic as the complete fabric is, it is based very soundly Despite lacking a comprehensive master-plan

86 Williams-Ellis developed Portmeirion over the on realities.’ years by taking care that the natural vegetation

and the existing buildings on the site where By way of a parallel between the development of incorporated into the whole scheme. Instead of Portmeirion and other twentieth-century British increasing the number of cottages and facilities seaside resorts, Williams-Ellis’s purposes in the hotel at the expense of its rural behind the village – which were to show that ‘it

86 Christopher Hussey, “Large Ideas for Small Estates. Portmeirian Merioneth,” 87 Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 1st edition Country Life, April 5, 1930, 502. (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 37; John Cornforth, “Portmeirion Revisited (1),” Country Life, September 16, 1976, RIBA, 729.

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setting, the village established a symbiotic Williams-Ellis had the serious intention of relationship with its context, demonstrating demonstrating that architecture ought to give that architecture could be developed, molded pleasure to everyone and not just to its even, to work in harmony with its surroundings. designer – contrary to what many starchitects do Furthermore, Williams-Ellis complemented this today. Portmeirion, as a playful collection of lesson by showing that even large-scale projects architecture, sculptures, and artifacts, whose aimed at the masses could be built using a use of color and scale plays tricks with its sustainable approach, primarily by seeking to visitors, is in part just a ‘boyhood’s dream minimize the environmental impact of come true’ but also Williams-Ellis’s construction through an efficient use of unconventional way of calling for less materials. Finally, the quality of wit that selfishness and more collaboration in

89 Williams-Ellis’s showed at Portmeirion has architecture generally. caused the place to be considered as ‘an architect’s playground’, and a private and Although it has been suggested that Clough idiosyncratic indulgence; for instance, the Williams-Ellis ‘was perhaps not quite aware of village has been described as a ‘place of his own motives’ and ‘did not quite know why he holidays right away from the everyday workaday sought a use for Portmeirion’, as his wife world, where fancy would be truly functional, Amabel commented, he had not just ‘rationalized 90 where the unexpected and an imaginative layout his desires.’ Williams-Ellis set to create a and décor would heighten the illusion of physical and inhabitable response against the

88 escape.’ Yet by employing a ‘light-opera’ unsympathetic process of modernization during approach and ‘Cloughing up’ his buildings, the inter-war years – an edgy form of

88 Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion: The Place and Its Meaning, 37. 90 Amabel Williams-Ellis, All Stracheys Are Cousins: Memoirs (London: 89 Hussey, “Large Ideas for Small Estates. Portmeirian Merioneth.”, 502. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 94.

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provocation that anticipated his ‘angry little terms of its own development but in relation to book on England and the Octopus. The outrageous changing times and patterns of life – as this artificiality and individuality of Portmeirion thesis has sought to demonstrate – Portmeirion’s have made hard for those in the architectural imaginative qualities, characteristic of the profession to be take it seriously. It was only very best of mid-1920s architecture, need to be from the 1970s that the idea that the village recognized as an unconventional yet highly effective form of popular communication that was the creation of a ‘no scholar fellow’ came to be questioned, instead treating the place as questions and also re-appropriates architectural an exemplar of Picturesque planning and for how and urban culture. to use the freedom enabled by combining eclectic architectural styles.91 Nonetheless, the study of a place that may seem too ambitious for a hobby-horse and yet incredibly absurd as architecture is still relevant today since it can be equally seen as architectural and environmental propaganda whose lessons are ever more pertinent. Indeed, Portmeirion has been described again and again at length in numerous magazines, TV shows, films and touristic guides, with these only adding to the cultural impact that the village has had since it first opened. However, when looked historically not only in

91 Alan Powers, “Happiness: The Reintegration of Architecture,” in Britain: Modern Architectures in History. (Reaktion Books, 2007), 164.

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Appendix 1 List of Welsh Holiday Parks

Cilcewydd, Powys Aberdovey, Gwynedd Severn Caravan Park Caravan park at Aberdovey Beach

Forden, Powys Tywyn, Gwynedd Tavern Caravan Park Bryn Y Mor Caravan Park Vaenol Caravan Park

Abermule, Powys Smithy Park. Country Holiday Park Llwyngwril,Gwynedd Sunbeach Holiday Park Borthwen Farm Caravan Park Llanbrynmair, Powys

Badgers Glade Holiday Park Fairbourne, Gwynedd Ynys Faig Camping and Caravan Site Machynlleth, Powys

Morben Isaf Caravan Park Garth Holiday Park Barmouth, Gwynedd Hendre Mynach Touring Caravan & Camping Park Caerddaniel Holiday Home Park

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Appendix 1 List of Welsh Holiday Parks

Talybont, Gwynedd Llandanwg, Gwynedd Sea Nymph Caravan Park Llandanwg Caravan Park Sunnysands Caravan Park Sarnfaen Holiday Park Harlech, Gwynedd Dalar Farm Campsite Woodland Caravan Park Rowen Caravan Park

Parc Caerelwan Dyffryn Ardudwy, Gwynedd Rhinog Park

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Name Year of Construction Name Year of Construction Tollgate 1976 (West) and 1999 Chantry Row 1963 (East) Chantry (Chantry 1969 Caffi 6 & Shop 1971 Lodge) Conveniences 1979. Enlarged and Villa Winch 1966-67 improved in 1995, Bristol Colonnade 1959 and in 2017. Visitors Information 1971 The Gloriette 1959 Offices 1971 The Central Piazza 1965 Cliff House 1967-69 The Gothic Pavilion 1965 Grotto 1954 The Mermaid 1840s. 'Cloughed up' in 1926 Gate House 1954 The Band Stand 1961. Built to Belvedere 1960 conceal the Bridge House 1959 village's sub-mains station Toll House 1929 Angel 1926 Battery 1927 Neptune 1926 Priors Lodging 1929 Trinity 1933 The Bell Tower 1928 Triumphal Arch & 1963. The cafe was (Campanile) Caffi Glas built in the 1950s Government House 1928 but was used as Watch House 1925-26 garages for guests. It would become a The Dolphin 1933 café in 2007 The Round House 1959-60 Salutation 1840s. 'Cloughed up' Lady's Lodge 1938-39 in 1966-67 The Pantheon 1959-60 Telford's Tower 1958

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Name Year of Construction Name Year of Construction Unicorn 1964 The Hotel 1840s. Enlarged in Audio Visual Room 1962 the 1930s, rebuilt in the 1980s due to Arches 1963-64 a 1981 fire. It The Town Hall 1937-38. After opened for business Clough passed away, again in 1988 the Town Hall Cafe Observatory Tower 1936-37 (1980s) and the White Horses 1750s. 'Cloughed up' Tudor Room were in 1966 built (1998). Light House 1956 Anchor & Fountain 1936 and 1937, respectively Amis Reunis 1930s

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Map of Portmeirion. Adapted from Llywelyn, Robin. Portmeirion Explored -A Guide for Visitors, 1995, 52 -53.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

East Tollgate top left; Caffi 6 Shop and Conveniences top middle and top right; Visitors Information bottom left; Cliff House bottom middle; and Grotto bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

North façade of the Gate House seen from the entrance top left; South façade of the Gate House top middle; West façade of the Belvedere top right; South façade of the Belvedere bottom left; North façade of the Bridge House bottom middle; and South façade of the Bridge House bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Toll House top left; Battery top middle; Prior’s Lodging top right; The Bell Tower (Campanile) bottom left; Government House bottom middle; and Watch House bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Dolphin top left; The Round House façade towards the Central Piazza top middle; Lady’s Lodge façades top right; The Pantheon (Dome) bottom left; Chantry Row bottom middle; and Chantry bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Villa Winch top left; Bristol Colonnade top middle; The Gloriette (façade towards the Central Piazza) top right; The Gloriette (façade towards Salutation) bottom left; The Central Piazza North bottom middle; and South façade of the Bridge House bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

The Mermaid top left; The Bandstand top middle; Angel (façade towards The Bandstand) top right; Angel (façade towards The Town Hall) bottom left; Neptune (façade towards Mermaid) bottom middle; and Trinity (façade towards Mermaid) bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Triumphal Arch top left; Caffi Glas top middle; Salutation top right; Telford’s Tower bottom left; Unicorn bottom middle; and Audio Visual Room bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 2 List and Location of the Buildings at Portmeirion

Arches top far left; The Town Hall top left; Anchor & Fountain top right; The Lighthouse top far right; Amis Reunis bottom left; The Hotel bottom middle; and The Observatory and White Hoses bottom right. Photographs by author.

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Appendix 3 List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion

Name Description Name Description Fragment Norman The Renaissance-Gothic Fragments from Emral After learning about the Shaw’s fireplace upper section of the music Hall, Flintshire demolition of Emral Hall from Dawpool room fireplace at Dawpool from Country Life Hall, Cheshire Hall (demolished in 1927) magazine, Williams-Ellis fronts the Pantheon at bought (for £ 13) the Portmeirion. The original 17th century ceiling, red-sandstone color was mullioned windows, and covered with white paint. wall paneling. As a result, he was able to replicate Ermal’s ballroom at Portmeirion. Fragment of the Clough acquired the gothic Westminster Abbey’s Clough Williams-Ellis gothic porch of porch, a 19th century stonework removed the damaged Nerquis Hall addition to the Jacobean parapet from Henry III’s Nerquis Hall, when the chapel at Westminster building was in a derelict Abbey and took them to state. Unlike other Portmeirion, where he

rescued buildings, Nerquis repurposed it as a Hall was not demolished. ‘tasteful barrier’ on a service road behind Salutation.

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Appendix 3 List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion

Name Description Name Description Fragments from the Hooton Hall was demolished Colonnade from Arnos Built c. 1760s by William porch of Hooton in 1932. Clough acquired Grove, Bristol Reeve as the front of a Hall, Chesire the porch which he used to bathhouse. After serious build the Gloriette so as bomb damage it was bought to frame the piazza; by Clough and transported another two columns were to Portmeirion. It was used, opposite to the inaugurated by Earl Gloriette, to support and Russel on April 10th, feature statues of Burmese 1959. dancers (one male and one female). Mermaid Railings, Due to refurbishment work Liverpool’s at the Liverpool’s Sailors’ Home Sailors’ Home during the 1950s, the mermaid railings were no longer needed. Clough

incorporated them not in Portmeirion in several of his post-World War II buildings but also in ‘The Portmeirion Shop’, a store in 7 Pont Street. It no longer belongs to Portmeirion Ldt.

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Appendix 3 List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion

Fireplace from Dawpool Hall

Left: Courtesy of Portmeirion Ldt. Righ: Photograph by author.

Porch from Nerquis Hall

Left: Parks and Gardens, Nerquis Hall (also known as Nercwys Hall), accessed 21 August 2019, https://www.parksand- gardens.org/places/nerquis-hall. Righ: Photograph by author.

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Appendix 3 List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion

Fragments from Emral Hall

Left: Courtesy of Portmeirion Ltd. Righ: Flickr, Hercules Hall, accessed 21 August 2019, https://www.flickr.com/pho- tos/alcilan/26794003604/sizes/h/.

Stonework from Westmister Abbey

Left: No author. "Portmeirion's famous sons remembered; Architect: Sir Clough Williams-Ellis." Building Design, no. 1852, 23 Jan 2009, p. 24. Righ: Photograph by author.

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Appendix 3 List of Rescued Buildings at Portmeirion

Fragments from Hooton Hall

Left: Lost Heritage, Hooton Hall, accessed 21 August 2019, http://www.lostherita- ge.org.uk/houses/lh_cheshire_hootonha- ll_info_gallery.html. Righ: Photograph by author.

Mermaid railings from Liverpool’s Sailors’ home

Left: Flickr, Liverpool Sailors' Home 31.10.1969, accessed 21 August 2019, https://www.flic- kr.com/photos/turtle_recall/8060565909/. Righ: Photograph by author.

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