Ninety years ago Clough Williams-Ellis acquired the site that became Portmeirion. Simon Whaley discovers how Country Life came to influence the way it looks today.
If it wasn’t for COUNTRY LIFE magazine Portmeirion would look a little different today. Ninety years ago, Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis invested less than £5,000 acquiring the land where he would build Portmeirion, but in 1925 it was known as Aber Iâ. He wanted a more romantic name and decided that he could draw upon it’s coastal location, which had the air of a port about it, and use the Welsh name of the county in which is was located (Merioneth): hence Portmeirion. His architectural concept of creating a coastal village had begun, a concept that would take 51 years to evolve. Although he made plans for his village, which appeared in The Architects Journal in 1926, it’s construction was an evolutionary process, for his plans did not include the finds he would make amongst COUNTRY LIFE’s pages in the years ahead.
