Portmeirion

Portmeirion
The Piazza
Portmeirion Location within Gwynedd
OS grid reference	SH588370
Community	Penrhyndeudraeth
Principal area	Gwynedd
Country	Wales
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	PENRHYNDEUDRAETH
Postcode district	LL48
Dialling code	01766
Police	North Wales
Fire	North Wales
Ambulance	Welsh
UK Parliament	Dwyfor Meirionnydd
Senedd Cymru – Welsh Parliament	Dwyfor Meirionnydd
List of places UK Wales Gwynedd 52°54′47″N 04°05′57″W / 52.91306°N 4.09917°W / 52.91306; -4.09917

Portmeirion (/pɔːrtˈmɛriən/;^[1] Welsh pronunciation: [pɔrtˈmei̯rjɔn]) is a folly^[2] tourist village in Gwynedd, North Wales. It lies on the estuary of the River Dwyryd in the community of Penrhyndeudraeth, 2 miles (3.2 km) from Porthmadog and 1 mile (1.6 km) from Minffordd railway station. Portmeirion was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the Baroque style and is now owned by a charitable trust. It 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.

History

Sir

Portmeirion is now owned by a

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.^[7] 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.^[8]

Architecture

Architecture critic Lewis Mumford devoted a large part of a chapter of his 1964 book The Highway and the City to Portmeiron, which he called

an artful and playful little modern village, designed as a whole and all of a piece ... a fantastic collection of architectural relics and impish modern fantasies. ... As an architect, [Williams-Ellis] is equally at home in the ancient, traditional world of the stark Welsh countryside and the once brave new world of "modern architecture." But he realized earlier than most of his architectural contemporaries how constricted and desiccated modern forms can become when the architect pays more attention to the mechanical formula or the exploitation of some newly fabricated material than to the visible human results. In a sense, Portmeiron is a gay, deliberately irresponsible reaction against the dull sterilities of so much that passes as modern architecture today. ... [I]t is prompted by [the] impulse ... to reclaim for architecture the freedom of invention — and the possibility of pleasurable fantasy — it had too abjectly surrendered to the cult of the machine.^[9]

Mumford referred to the architecture as both romantic and picturesque in Baroque form, "with tongue in cheek." He described the total effect as "relaxing and often enchanting" with "playful absurdities" that are "delicate and human in touch", making the village a "happy relief" from the "rigid irrationalities and the calculated follies" of the modern world.^[9]

The houses Anchor, Arches, the hotel building, Lady's Lodge, the inside of the Pantheon and the vaulted ceiling of Gate House are decorated with murals and frescoes by the Frankfurt-born artist and friend of Clough Williams-Ellis Hans Feibusch.

The grounds (Y Gwyllt, meaning 'The Wild place') contain a collection of rhododendrons and other exotic plants in a wild-garden setting, which was begun before Williams-Ellis's time by the previous owner George Henry Caton Haigh and has continued to be developed since Williams-Ellis's death.

Y Gwyllt forms an approximately triangular shaped area on the peninsula to the north of the Hotel (the area was formerly the pleasure gardens of Aber Iâ mansion)^[11] and stretches down to the coast and the Dwyryd estuary.^[12] Its location by the sea means it is frost-free, making it possible to grow rare plants such as camellias^[13] and "an outstanding rhododendron collection of the early twentieth century".^[11] The area also contains a Dog Cemetery.

The gardens are designated, at Grade II*, on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.^[14]

Filming location

Television series and films have shot exterior scenes at Portmeirion, often depicting the village as an exotic European location. These include the 1960

Portmeirion has been the location for music videos and concerts. The 1980s Scottish band Altered Images used Portmeirion in their video "See Those Eyes". Siouxsie and the Banshees used Portmeirion as a setting in their 1987 recording of "The Passenger" for the "Laughing Prisoner" spoof. This video included various scenes from The Prisoner.

The Prisoner

In 1966–1967, Patrick McGoohan returned to Portmeirion to film exteriors for The Prisoner, a surreal spy drama in which Portmeirion played a starring role as "The Village", in which McGoohan's retired intelligence agent, known only as "Number 6", was incarcerated and interrogated, albeit in pleasant surroundings. At Williams-Ellis' request, Portmeirion was not identified on screen as the filming location until the credits of the final episode of the series, and indeed, Williams-Ellis stated that the levy of an entrance fee was a deliberate ploy to prevent the Village from being spoilt by overcrowding.^[4] The show, broadcast on ITV in the UK during the winter of 1967-68 and CBS in the US in the summer of 1968, became a cult classic, and fans continue to visit Portmeirion, which hosts annual Prisoner fan conventions.^[18] The building that was used as the lead character's home in the series was used as a Prisoner-themed souvenir shop. Many of the locations used in The Prisoner are virtually unchanged after more than 50 years, and a large outdoor chess board was installed in 2016 in homage to its appearance in series.

Because of its Prisoner connection, Portmeirion has been used as the filming location for a number of homages to the series, ranging from comedy skits to an episode of the BBC documentary series The Celts, which recreated scenes from The Prisoner. Other occasions include:

• In 1987 Jools Holland starred in a spoof documentary, The Laughing Prisoner, with Stephen Fry, Terence Alexander and Hugh Laurie. Much of it was shot on location in Portmeirion, and it included archive footage of McGoohan.
• Portmeirion, along with the Welsh village of Morfa Bychan, was used as the location for the filming of the Supergrass video "Alright". The video includes numerous references to The Prisoner.
• Iron Maiden recorded a song called "The Prisoner" on their 1982 album, The Number of the Beast. In a documentary programme about that album (as part of the Classic Albums TV series), lead singer Bruce Dickinson wanders through the avenues of Portmeirion and describes how the song was written and how the band's manager obtained permission from Patrick McGoohan to use dialogue from the show in the song's introduction.
• The
  The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul
  " filmed in Portmeirion with the band wearing costumes from The Prisoner.
• In Series 12, Episode 13 of Wheeler Dealers the finished Caterham 7 is taken to Portmeirion to pay homage to The Prisoner, which featured the Lotus 7, the predecessor of the Caterham 7.

Panoramic view of the central piazza

See also

• List of gardens in Wales
• Plas Brondanw
• Popeye Village
• Portmeirion Pottery

References

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Portmeirion.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Portmeirion.

• Official website
• The PLEASURE of PORTMEIRION, BBC Archive