... is a tourist village in Gwynedd, North Wales designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village, and is now owned by a charitable trust. The village is located in the community of Penrhyndeudraeth, on the estuary of the River Dwyryd, 2 miles (3.2 km) south east of Porthmadog, and 1 mile (1.6 km) from Minffordd railway station. Portmeirion has served as the location for numerous films and television shows, most famously as "The Village" in the 1960s television show The Prisoner. Many of the buildings within the village are listed by Cadw, the Welsh historic environment service, for their architectural and historical importance, and the gardens are listed, at Grade II*, on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. The main building of the hotel and the cottages "White Horses", "Mermaid", and "The Salutation" had been a private estate called Aber Iâ (English: Ice estuary), developed in the 1850s on the site of a late 18th-century foundry and boatyard. Williams-Ellis changed the name (which he had interpreted as "frozen mouth") to Portmeirion: "Port-" from its place on the coast; "-meirion" from the county of Merioneth (Meirionydd) in which it was sited. The very minor remains of a mediaeval castle (known variously as Castell Deudraeth, Castell Gwain Goch and Castell Aber Iâ) are in the woods just outside the village, recorded by Gerald of Wales in 1188. In 1931 Williams-Ellis bought from the estate of his uncle, Sir Osmond Williams, Bt (1849-1927), the Victorian crenellated mansion Castell Deudraeth with the intention of incorporating it into the Portmeirion hotel complex, but the intervention of the war and other problems prevented this. Williams-Ellis had always considered the Castell to be “the largest and most imposing single building on the Portmeirion Estate" and sought ways to incorporate it. Eventually, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund as well as the Wales Tourist Board, his original aims were achieved and Castell Deudraeth was opened as an 11 bedroom hotel and restaurant on 20 August 2001, 23 years after Williams-Ellis's death, by the Welsh opera singer Bryn Terfel. The village of Portmeirion has been a source of inspiration for writers and television producers. Noël Coward wrote "Blithe Spirit" while staying in the Fountain 2 (Upper Fountain) suite at Portmeirion. George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were also early visitors. In 1956 the architect Frank Lloyd Wright came and other famous guests included Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. In the late 1950s, Stanley Long, a former RAF photographer, came to create a collectible stereoview series through VistaScreen. The village has many connections to the Beatles. Their manager Brian Epstein was a frequent visitor, along with Paul McCartney, and George Harrison spent his 50th birthday there in 1993. It was while Harrison was in Portmeirion that he filmed interviews for "The Beatles Anthology" documentary. Musician Jools Holland visited whilst filming for the TV music show "The Tube", and was so impressed that he has had his studio and other buildings at his home in Blackheath built to a design inspired by Portmeirion. The 1960s cult TV programme "The Prisoner" was also shot here and helped make Portmeirion famous. The village was the setting of the inaugural Festival N°6, which took place in September 2012 and featured headline acts Spiritualized, Primal Scream and New Order. The festival then ran each year in September at Portmeirion until 2018, when the festival organisers announced that the festival would be taking an indefinite break. |