All 'Clough-ed up'

A romantic experiment surrounded by the natural majesty of North Wales, Portmeirion began life as an oddity, but has evolved into an architectural phenomenon kept alive by dedication, discovers Ben Lerwill

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ONE hundred years ago, an architect named Clough Williams-Ellis went to view an overgrown private peninsula on a wide estuary near Snowdonia (now Eryri), North Wales. The site had been badly neglected. Staring up and around, he saw a deserted mansion on the shoreline, a weed-choked stable block on the hill and gnarled cliffs poking above the trees. As his eyes met each feature, his heart soared. He'd scoured the British Isles for a setting such as this and, finally, here it was on the Welsh coastline. A place to build his village.

For decades, Williams-Ellis had harboured a wish to create a township that would be in harmony with the landscape around it, accentuating rather than spoiling the natural scenery. This half-hidden headland was the perfect spot. 'When I saw it,' he later remembered, 'I thought, gosh, I need look no further.'

Within days, he had contacted the Midland Bank to arrange a loan to buy the peninsula, soon changing its name from Aber Iâ (Glacial River Mouth) to Portmeirion, a title that combined the site's coastal location with Merioneth, the historic county in which it sat. The purchase took place in 1925. By the Easter weekend of 1926, he was already able to welcome visitors. The run-down mansion — the previous tenant of which had been a recluse, fond of reciting Bible verse to her 15 dogs — had morphed into Hotel Portmeirion. This was merely the start.