Portmeirion

The unique village of Portmeirion at the foot of Snowdonia has no full-time residents and is purely for tourists, some of whom stay in the hotel or self-catering cottages. The Ymddiriedolaeth Clough Williams-Ellis Foundation now owns the village but it was originally a riverside mansion estate called Aber Iâ, then was purchased in 1925 for £4,000 by Northamptonshire-born architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1888-1978). He had the vision and the funds to fill his “romantic experiment” with small buildings and follies, many bought at auction, that he thought were sympathetic to the Welsh landscape, though many would describe Portmeirion as Italianate.

It was also the film location for the seventeen episodes of TV’s ‘The Prisoner’ (1967-68) whose afficionados congregate there every year. Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009) played an ex-secret agent held prisoner in the surreal village even though he seems free to roam. The towers, tinkling bells, colonnades, piazza, balconies, triumphal arch, trompe l’oeuil windows, ponds, fountains, scaled-down houses, 70-acre woodland and sandy beach all added to the quirky atmosphere of the show.

Williams-Ellis’s daughter, Susan (1918-2007), a gifted designer, established Portmeirion Potteries Ltd with husband Euan Cooper-Willis in 1961, selling from a shop in the village but manufacturing in Stoke-on-Trent, and her table- and kitchenware are very popular.

(Top image showing giant chessboard in the village centre: Mike McBey at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)