Portmeirion

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Pantheon, also: The Green Dome
The Amis Reunis (The Stone Boat)

Portmeirion is a small, isolated, man-made village on the coast of Snowdonia in North Wales in the United Kingdom. The village, east of the city of Porthmadog on the Bay of Tremadog, was developed from 1925 and until 1975 by Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978) in the Italian style of a place on the Mediterranean Sea.

Location description

Today's Portmeirion was a landing stage with a forge for slate removal in the 19th century. The historical name of the peninsula in the Bay of Tremadog is Aber îa , the "icy mouth". In 1925, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis bought what he said was overgrown land for less than £ 5,000 and renamed it Port Meirion for planned development and marketing ; "Port" as a reference to the lake location, "Meirion" after the Welsh county of Merionethshire . The spelling was changed in later years.

Portmeirion's original building stock included the blacksmith's shop (later White Horses ), a residential building (now the hotel), a gardener's house ( mermaid ) and stables ( salutation ).

William-Ellis was a self-taught architect . He had only attended the Architectural Association School in London for three months. His family home, Plas Brondanw , in whose design he played a major role, is only a few kilometers from Portmeirion.

The former residential building, which was expanded to become a hotel, opened in 1926. Williams-Ellis pursued the concept of a closely grouped coastal town based on the Mediterranean model from the start. Over the years the place was redesigned and expanded according to his plans. He collected parts of demolished buildings and structures and gradually realized a dream: “ I wanted to develop a really broad interest in things like architecture, landscape planning, the effect of colors, and design in general. “With Portmeirion he wanted to prove that planned architecture and the inclusion and preservation of the natural landscape did not have to be a contradiction in terms. It was important to him that his new buildings, mostly in the classical style, did not look like new buildings.

Lines of sight and playing with optical illusions are central design elements in Portmeirion. On closer inspection, magnificent arcades turn out to be hardly a man's height. In addition to buildings that were bought, demolished and rebuilt elsewhere, he built the ship "Amis Réunis", which was destroyed in a storm off Portmeirion, as a stone boat in the quay wall in front of the hotel, which looks very real when coming from land. Stone slabs on a monument base celebrate the most memorable Welsh summers.

Almost all of the proceeds from each hotel season during the summer months were invested in expanding the town. The first construction phase ended with the beginning of the Second World War . After that, the construction work began again only hesitantly, much of which had to be preserved in substance. To make matters worse, Williams-Ellis' “fallen buildings” were designed more for the eye than for human use. At least this applied to the structures erected first. Walls and roofs were thin and not insulated, the windows drafty, and the building materials often of poor quality. In order to preserve the place for the future, this shortcoming had to be remedied during renovations in the 1980s and 1990s. In the process, the Pantheon also lost its dome, which was covered with green wooden shingles, which were replaced with copper cladding due to fire protection. However, this has not taken on a green color. At the beginning of the 1950s, motor vehicles were gradually banned from the town and the garages were mostly converted into business premises. The construction work was largely completed by 1976. Williams-Ellis' last building was the right of the two ticket booths at the new entrance area. Its counterpart was only built in 1999 in the same style. In a major fire in 1981, the hotel building was destroyed, then restored and reopened in 1988 in the old style.

The core of today's nearby Castell Deudraeth Castle dates from 1840, which was expanded and rebuilt around 1850 to look like a castle. The name is reminiscent of Castell Gwain Goch and Castell Aber Iau , which is said to have been built by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) in 1188. Williams-Ellis acquired the property and the associated fields and wooded areas in 1931 for the planned hotel expansion, which, however, did not take place. By the end of the 1990s, Castell Deudraeth fell into disrepair . After renovation by the Portmeirion Foundation, it was reopened as a hotel in 2001. Most of Portmeirion's buildings are now self-catering guest accommodation, some rooms are served by hotel services.

Portmeirion is home to an important collection of rhododendrons and exotic plants. The entire hotel complex is a listed building and is maintained by a foundation. The place is actually only accessible to guests, but can also be visited by day visitors for an entrance fee.

Portmeirion in the media

The place became particularly known as the filming location for the television series Secret Mission for John Drake with the American actor and director Patrick McGoohan and especially for its follow-up series number 6 . Six Of One , the British fan club for TV series number 6 (The Prisoner) , holds regular meetings in the village that provided the backdrop for the seemingly surreal episodes. In many other television programs, mostly British series and films, Portmeirion was used as a setting, for example in Doctor Who .

Music videos such as "The Passenger" by Siouxsie and the Banshees were also produced here.

The writer Noël Coward wrote the novel Blithe Spirit in the village . For Brian Epstein, the manager of the music group The Beatles , the founder and builder Portmeirions, Clough Williams-Ellis, built his own accommodation as an extension to the "Gate House" building.

Portmeirion Pottery

Portmeirion tableware from the Pomona series

Portmeirion is also the name of a company that Clough Williams-Ellis' daughter Susan Williams-Ellis and her husband Euan Cooper-Ellis founded in Portmeirion in 1960.

It manufactures ceramic dinnerware as well as table and kitchen accessories. After the couple bought a run-down factory in Stoke-on-Trent , the center of the British ceramics industry, they moved the headquarters and production of Portmeirion Pottery and Portmeirion Group PLC to England. In November 2006 the company bought Pimpernel, a well-known UK manufacturer of table mats and coasters. The Portmeirion Group had 2005 sales of £ 27 million. Portmeirion employs around 500 people in Stoke-on-Trent, with more in a branch in the USA. The best-known tableware series are Botanic Garden and Pomona , which is named after the Roman goddess of the fruit blessing . Plant and fruit drawings from the 19th century were the model for both series.

Hans Feibusch

Wall paintings and frescoes by the Frankfurt- born artist and friend of Clough Williams-Ellis Hans Feibusch can be found in Portmeirion. Feibusch was a Jew; his work was on display in the "Third Reich" as part of the " Degenerate Art " exhibition. Feibusch fled the Nazis and became a British citizen in 1938. His painterly work mainly includes mythical and religiously inspired figures and motifs. His works can be seen in many public and church buildings in Great Britain. In Portmeirion there are Feibusch's murals on the Anchor , Arches , the hotel building, Lady's Lodge , inside the Pantheon and on the vaulted ceiling of the Gate House .

Chronology of the development of Portmeirion

time building
19th century Existing development: White Horses, former forge; Castell Deudraeth (in series number 6 the hospital); Main house; Gardener's house, stables
1925 Conversion of the main house / hotel, gardener's house / mermaid; Stables / salutation
1925/26 Angel & Neptune
1926 Watch House, opening of the hotel
1927/28 Campanile (bell tower); Prior's Lodging
1928/29 Government House
1929 Great house
1930 "Amis Réunis" - stone boat
1930s Hercules Hall; Pilot house; Battery Cottage, Dolphin; Fountain; Anchor, Trinity
1933/34 Chantry
1937/38 camera obscura
1954 Lighthouse (after the war-related building restrictions were lifted)
1954/55 Gate house
1956/57 Telford's Tower
1958 Bristol Colonnade; High Cloister ("Veranda" of the Pantheon / Cathedral)
1958/59 Round House ("6 Private" at number 6 ), Bridge House
1959 Pantheon - Dom, ("Green domed building"; the green roof was lost during fire protection renovations in the 1990s)
1960 Belvedere
1961/62 Chantry Row
1962 Playhouse
1963 Triumphal Arch; Gothic Pavilion
1963/64 Arches
1964 Gloriette balcony
1964/65 Unicorn
1966 Villa Winch; Central Piazza (instead of a tennis court)
1968/70 Cliff House
1977 New Toll Booth
1978 Terrace self-service restaurant
1981 Hotel and restaurant building completely destroyed by fire
1983 Centenary gazebo; Prisoner Information Center opens in the Round House ("6 Private") on series number 6
1988 Reopening of the hotel after restoration
1998 Tudor Room, annex to Hercules Hall
1999 Prisoner Information Center closes; second ticket booth opposite Toll Booth; Castell Deudraeth reopened as a hotel after renovation
2001 New prisoner shop under the direction of the Hotel Portmeirion in the Round House
2007 Caffi Glas (The Blue Café), Italian restaurant (built in 1950 as a guest garage)
2016 permanent chess field, created by the hotel in honor of and in memory of Patrick McGoohan's series number 6 next to the Central Piazza

literature

  • Jan Morris: Portmeirion. Antique Collectors' Club, 2006, ISBN 1851495223 . (English)
  • Jonah Jones: Clough Williams-Ellis: The Architect of Portmeirion: A Memoir. Seren Books / Poetry Wales Pr Ltd, 1997, ISBN 1854111663 . (English)
  • Robin Llywelyn: Llawlyfr Portmeirion. Portmeirion Guidebook , Porthmadog 2000
  • Sir Clough Williams-Ellis: The Place And Its Meaning , London 1963, new edition 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Glauert: The village of fallen houses. In: FAZ.net . February 8, 2012, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Portmeirion Pottery and Portmeirion Group PLC ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.portmeirionproducts.co.uk

Web links

Commons : Portmeirion  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 52 ° 55 ′  N , 4 ° 6 ′  W