Portmeirion Village

This unique village is set on its own private peninsula on the southern shores of Snowdonia. It was created by Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) to demonstrate how a naturally beautiful place could be developed without spoiling it. Clough acquired the site for Portmeirion in 1925 for less than £5,000 as it was then, "a neglected wilderness - long abandoned by those romantics who had realised the unique appeal and possibilities of this favoured promontory but who had been carried away by their grandiose landscaping and improvement enthusiasm into sorrowful bankruptcy."

Clough immediately changed the name from Aber Ia (Glacial Estuary) to Portmeirion: Port because of the coastal location and Meirion as this is Welsh for Merioneth, the county in which it lay. Portmeirion is made up of about 50 buildings most of which are used as hotel or self-catering accommodation and surrounded by 70 acres of sub-tropical woodland gardens. On the main driveway is Castell Deudraeth, a Victorian mansion recently restored as a brasserie style restaurant and hotel.

All the cottages in the village are let as part of the Portmeirion Hotel and the village also has several shops and restaurants and is surrounded by the Gwyllt sub-tropical gardens and woodlands and miles of sandy beaches. Portmeirion is open all year round for both staying guests and day visitors alike.

The privately owned peninsula of Portmeirion with its fabulous architecture, sandy beaches and exotic sub-tropical gardens and woodland has inspired many illustrious authors, artists, photographers and TV and Film producers. Writers such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemmingway and Bertrand Russell were habitués. Noel Coward wrote his best known comedy here, Blithe Spirit, during a two week stay at Lower Fountain in 1941. Patrick McGoohan's enigmatic television series The Prisoner was filmed on location at Portmeirion in 1966-67.