Sir Clough Williams-Ellis | |
---|---|
Born | Gayton, Northamptonshire, England | 28 May 1883
Died | 9 April 1978 94) | (aged
Occupation | Architect |
Projects | Creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales |
Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC (28 May 1883 – 9 April 1978) was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales. He became a major figure in the development of Welsh architecture in the first half of the 20th century, in a variety of styles and building types. [1]
Clough Williams-Ellis was born in Gayton, Northamptonshire, England, but his family moved back to his father's native North Wales when he was four. The family have strong Welsh roots and Clough Williams-Ellis claimed direct descent from Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales. [2] His father John Clough Williams Ellis (1833–1913) was a clergyman and noted mountaineer while his mother Ellen Mabel Greaves (1851–1941) was the daughter of the slate mine proprietor John Whitehead Greaves and sister of John Ernest Greaves. [3]
He was educated at Oundle School in Northamptonshire. Though he read for the natural sciences tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, he never graduated. After a few months at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 1903–04 (which he located by looking up "Architecture" in the London telephone directory), he worked for an architect for a few months before setting up his own practice in London. His first commission was Larkbeare, a summer house for Anne Wynne Thackeray in Cumnor, Oxfordshire, in 1903-04 (finished 1907) which he designed while still a student.
In 1908 he inherited a small country house, Plas Brondanw, from his father, which he would restore and embellish through the rest of his life, as well as rebuilding it after a fire in 1951.
Williams-Ellis served with distinction in the First World War, first with the Royal Fusiliers and then with the Welsh Guards as an intelligence officer attached to the Tank Corps. He was described as lieutenant on the day of his wedding. [4]
After the war, Williams-Ellis helped John St Loe Strachey (later his father-in-law) revive pisé construction in Britain, [5] building an apple storehouse followed by Harrowhill Copse bungalow at Newlands Corner using shuttering and rammed earth. [6]
One of his earliest designs of 1905 was for a pair of Welsh labourers' cottages in a vernacular style with end gable chimneys which imitate the 16th-century Snowdonia Houses [7] In 1909 he designed a house in an advanced Arts and Crafts style for Cyril Joynson at Brecfa in Breconshire [7] In 1913–1914 he was responsible for the rebuilding of Llangoed Hall in Breconshire, one of the last country houses to be built before the First World War. While it is a mixture of a number of historic styles, it also has modern features with elements such as the chimneys derived from the work of Lutyens. [8] Other work in Wales by Clough Williams-Ellis includes the Festiniog Memorial Hospital of 1922, Pentrefelin Village Hall, and the Conway Fall Cafe. [9]
In 1925, Williams-Ellis acquired the land in North Wales that would become the Italianate village of Portmeirion [10] (made famous in the 1960s as the location of the cult TV series The Prisoner , and the 1976 Doctor Who story The Masque of Mandragora ). Portmeirion is notable not only as an architectural composition, but also because Clough Williams-Ellis was able to preserve fragments from other now demolished buildings from Wales and Cheshire. These include the plaster ceiling from Emral Hall [11]
In 1928, Williams-Ellis wrote his book England and the Octopus (published in 1928); its outcry at the urbanization of the countryside and loss of village cohesion inspired a group of young women to form Ferguson's Gang. They took up Williams-Ellis's call for action and from 1927 to 1946 were active in rescuing important, but lesser-known, rural properties from being demolished. Shalford Mill in Surrey, Newtown Old Town Hall on the Isle of Wight and Priory Cottages in Oxfordshire were all successfully saved due to the Gang's fundraising efforts. The Gang endowed these properties and significant tracts of the Cornish coastline to the care of the National Trust. The Gang's mastermind Peggy Pollard (known within the Gang by her pseudonym Bill Stickers) and Williams-Ellis became lifelong friends. [12]
In 1929 Williams-Ellis bought portrait painter George Romney's house in Hampstead. [13]
By the 1930s, Williams-Ellis had become a fashionable British architect; he was commissioned to create numerous works throughout the UK. These include buildings at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, cottages in Cornwell, Oxfordshire, Tattenhall in Cheshire, and Cushendun, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. During the 1930s he also designed the former summit building on Wales' highest mountain, Snowdon. However, after a reduction in window sizes (they kept blowing in) and further alterations in the 1960s and the 1980s, it was in a poor state by the end of the 20th century. Prince Charles described it as "the highest slum in Wales". [14]
Williams-Ellis served on several government committees concerned with design and conservation and was instrumental in setting up the British national parks after 1945. The following year he was appointed inaugural chairman of the Stevenage Development Corporation by Lewis Silkin. He wrote and broadcast extensively on architecture, design and the preservation of the rural landscape. He was a member of the Knickerbocker Club. [15]
At Aberdaron he designed the Old Post Office in a vernacular style in 1950. [9] An important later commission was the redesign and rebuilding of Nantclwyd Hall in Denbighshire Clough Williams- Ellis was equally capable in working in the Modernist idiom of the interwar years. This is well demonstrated by the recently restored Caffi Moranedd at Cricieth and the former Snowdon Summit Station of 1934, which was demolished in 2007. [16]
In 1958 Williams-Ellis was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for public services". [17] He was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Years Honours List of 1972 "for services to the preservation of the environment and to architecture". [18] At the time, he was the oldest person ever to be knighted. [19]
In 1915 Williams-Ellis married the writer Amabel Strachey. Their eldest daughter, Susan Williams-Ellis (1918–2007), used the name Portmeirion Pottery for the company she created with her husband in 1961. The second daughter, Charlotte Rachel Anwyl Williams-Ellis (1919–2010), was a zoologist and environmentalist with a Cambridge PhD in agricultural science. She married the agriculturalist Lindsay Russell Wallace in 1945, and moved to New Zealand. [21] [22] Their youngest child, Christopher Moelwyn Strachey Williams-Ellis (1923 – 13 March 1944) served as a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards during the Second World War. He was killed in action and is buried at Minturno War Cemetery. [23]
Welsh language novelist Robin Llywelyn is his grandson, and fashion designer Rose Fulbright-Vickers is his great-granddaughter. [24] Sculptor David Williams-Ellis, the stepfather of Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, is his great-nephew. [25]
Sir Clough Williams-Ellis died in April 1978, aged 94. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated. Twenty years after his death some of his ashes were placed in a marine rocket that was launched in a New Year's Eve firework display over the estuary at Portmeirion. [26]
Portmeirion is a folly 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.
Ronald John McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun, PC, was a British Conservative politician and writer.
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture with picturesque aesthetics. The resulting style of architecture was essentially of its own time. "The backward look transforms its object," Siegfried Giedion wrote of historicist architectural styles; "every spectator at every period—at every moment, indeed—inevitably transforms the past according to his own nature."
Berriew is a village and community in Montgomeryshire, Powys, Wales. It is on the Montgomeryshire Canal and the Afon Rhiw, near the confluence with the River Severn at grid reference SJ185005, 79 miles (128 km) from Cardiff and 151 miles (243 km) from London. The village itself had a population of 283. and the community also includes Garthmyl Hall and Refail.
Cushendun is a small coastal village in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It sits off the A2 coast road between Cushendall and Ballycastle. It has a sheltered harbour and lies at the mouth of the River Dun and Glendun, one of the nine Glens of Antrim. The Mull of Kintyre in Scotland is only about 15 miles away across the North Channel and can be seen easily on clear days. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 138 people. It is part of Causeway Coast and Glens district.
Susan Williams-Ellis was a British pottery designer, who was best known for co-founding Portmeirion Pottery. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis.
Sir Richard Clough, known by his Welsh contemporaries as Rhisiart Clwch, was a merchant from Denbigh, north-east Wales, and an agent of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Plas Brondanw in Garreg, Llanfrothen, Gwynedd, North Wales, was the family home of Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of the Italianate village Portmeirion, and elements of similar architectural styles can be seen at both locations. It is a grade II* listed building. The gardens, in a series of garden rooms enclosed by yew hedges and open lawns, linked by carefully planned vistas, is one of only three Grade I listed gardens in Gwynedd.
Conwy Falls is a waterfall on the River Conwy at Bro Garmon in Conwy County Borough in Wales. The falls and surrounding area are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The nearby cafe, adjacent to the A5, is an interesting example of the work of the Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis, of Portmeirion fame.
Parc is the name of an ancient mansion found near the village of Croesor in the community of Llanfrothen near Penrhyndeudraeth, in Gwynedd, Wales. The former mansion has been in ruins since the end of the 17th century when the resident Anwyl Family moved to Llugwy. Thomas Nicholas described the site in his Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales [see box].
Poundley and Walker or John Wilkes Poundley and David Walker were a land surveyors and architects’ partnership with offices at Black Hall, Kerry, Montgomeryshire and at Unity Buildings, 22 Lord Street, Liverpool. The partnership was established probably in the mid-1850s and was dissolved in June 1867. The partnership was involved with large country estate building projects, church and civic buildings and some civil engineering. They specialized in building model farms. J. W. Poundley was also the county surveyor for Montgomeryshire from 1861–1872. The architect, canal and railway engineer, T. G. Newnham appears have been associated with the partnership.
James Kellaway Colling (1816–1905) or J. K. Colling was an English architect, watercolour artist and noted book illustrator. He was a pioneer of early Chromolithographic printing and his graphic work has been compared with that of William Morris and John Ruskin
Architecture of Wales is an overview of architecture in Wales from the medieval period to the present day, excluding castles and fortifications, ecclesiastical architecture and industrial architecture. It covers the history of domestic, commercial, and administrative architecture.
Amabel Williams-Ellis was an English writer, critic, and an early member of the Bloomsbury Group. As well as publishing her own writings, Williams-Ellis was a prolific editor, translator, and anthologist, compiling collections of fairy stories, folk tales, and science fiction.
Portmeirion Town Hall, also known as the Hercules Hall, is a building in Portmeirion, Gwynedd, Wales. Being in a private village without a government, the building is used as an events venue. It is a Grade I listed building.
The Campanile or Bell Tower is a prominent structure in the village of Portmeirion, in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. Portmeirion was created as an Italianate village by the architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, who bought the Aber Iâ mansion and its estate in 1925 as the location for his project, building his eccentric, eclectic village between 1925 and 1975. The Campanile is a Grade II* listed building.
The Hotel Portmeirion or sometimes Portmeirion Hotel is a hotel and restaurant in the village of Portmeirion, in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. The Hotel and many associated buildings and structures are Grade II listed buildings.
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