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Landmarks

Portmeirion

A pastel Italianate village on a Welsh estuary was built by a man who never claimed it was Italian, and it later became the home of The Prisoner.

Published

Portmeirion
Photo: Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Quick Facts

Location
Penrhyndeudraeth, on the Dwyryd estuary, Gwynedd, north Wales
Built
Main phase 1925–1939, with further building from 1954 to 1976
Creator
Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978)
Original purpose
To show that a beautiful site could be developed without spoiling it
Famous screen role
The Village in the 1967–68 TV series The Prisoner
Setting
A compact coastal village beside the Dwyryd estuary, with about 70 acres of woodland gardens known as the Gwyllt
Landmark features
Campanile, Piazza, Gloriette, Hotel Portmeirion and the Italianate waterfront
Original name
Aber Iâ, meaning 'estuary of ice'

The village that was a sales pitch

Portmeirion looks like a dream of the Mediterranean, but it began as an argument. Clough Williams-Ellis wanted to prove that you could build on a lovely stretch of coast without wrecking it, and he chose to do it at his own expense. He was an architect, and he was dismayed by the sprawl and ugly development he saw spreading across Britain's countryside. He wrote about it in his 1928 book England and the Octopus. Portmeirion was his working example of how to do it better.

Buying a secret headland

In 1925 Williams-Ellis acquired the estate, then known as Aber Iâ, from an elderly relative. It was a wooded peninsula with an old house, which he turned into a hotel, and a stretch of shore tucked above the Dwyryd estuary. He renamed it Portmeirion: 'Port' for the coastal setting and 'Meirion' after Merionethshire, the old county. Building began in earnest, and he kept going until the outbreak of the Second World War paused work in 1939. He picked up again in the 1950s and carried on for more than twenty years.

Italy, but not quite

People often call Portmeirion a copy of an Italian village, and Williams-Ellis was fond of the Ligurian town of Portofino. He denied that he was trying to copy it, though. He was after a feeling rather than a replica. The result is a collage. Many of the buildings were rescued from elsewhere: bits of demolished houses and country mansions were carried here and given a second life. Its stage-set quality is deliberate. Colours are bright, and the proportions are playful. Some buildings are smaller than they seem, and a few façades use forced perspective to look grander than they are. One famous example is the Gloriette, and the campanile bell tower rising above the village is another. Look out too for the Piazza, the statue of Buddha and the gilded figures that give the place its gently surreal mood.

Number Six's prison

In the late 1960s Portmeirion became the setting for The Prisoner, the cult series starring Patrick McGoohan. The village stood in for the strange coastal community where a former secret agent is held and known only as Number Six. The filming was a big part of how the place became famous worldwide, and fans still travel from around the world to see it. An annual gathering of Prisoner devotees, held in the village, has become a pilgrimage of its own. The irony delighted many: the most charming holiday village in Wales was the perfect location for a surreal nightmare about being unable to leave.

What to look for when you visit

Walk down to the estuary and look back up. The village is built in layers, climbing the hillside, with every viewpoint framed by a colonnade or an archway. Williams-Ellis had a genius for surprise, and a path rarely ends where you expect it to. The gardens are as important as the buildings. About 70 acres of woodland, known as the Gwyllt, hold rhododendrons and subtropical planting, and its paths are worth wandering. Cars are largely kept to the edge, so the centre feels like a stage rather than a street. Williams-Ellis lived to the age of 94 and saw his creation become one of Wales's best-known places. His pitch worked: Portmeirion proved that beauty and development could share a coastline.

Notable people

  • Sir Clough Williams-Ellis
  • Patrick McGoohan
  • Amabel Williams-Ellis
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