Sir Clough Williams-Ellis

Sir Clough was the type of individual who knew what his dream was and had the inspiration, talent and motivation to enable him to carry it out. As an eminent architect, he preferred to embark on projects that gave an extension of the natural features rather than flatten the land in order to create something having stark and angular appearance that might have been built anywhere.Clough was born at Gayton, Northamptonshire on 28th May 1883, but four years later the family moved to Glasfryn, North Wales. He established his own architectural practice in London at the age of 22, after only three months of formal training, suggesting that much of his architectural training and education had been self-taught. During WWI, he was a tank corps officer in the Welsh Guards, winning a Military Cross and Bar. In 1915, he married Amabel Strachey, daughter of St Loe Strachey, editor and owner of the "Spectator".

Returning to peacetime, Clough resumed his architectural pursuits and became involved in the Garden City movement. Teaming up with other like-minded pioneers, he and the group founded societies to promote the establishment of the Green Belt system of open spaces around cities, and vigorously supported the National Trust in its objective to safeguard the environment. He did more than voice his strong views on urban development, becoming the chairman of the development committee of the first "New Town" - Stevenage.

Sir Clough, however, had also been developing a dream to create his own village where he would be "sole master of all he surveyed". A village where he could show "that one could develop even a very beautiful site without defiling it, and given sufficient loving care one could even improve on what God had provided". With his love of the sea, which had passed on to him from his father, he set out by sail to find a suitable island on which to build his dream village. His search took him as far as New Zealand but finally he settled on an ideal spot right on his door step in North Wales, a private peninsula just five miles from his family home, containing a large house on the shoreline and a very overgrown piece of land. Clough purchased the property and went on to develop and build the village in two periods separated by WWII, 1926-1939 and 1954-1972.

Even though he was deeply involved with his dream village during these periods, he was also active in other fields, becoming President of the Institute of Landscape Artists, V.P. of The Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales, and numerous other committees including the National Trust in Wales. In 1958, he was awarded a Commander of the British Empire and was knighted in 1971 to become Sir Clough Williams-Ellis for services "to architecture and the environment". Shortly before his death on April 8, 1978, Sir Clough remarked that Portmeirion was "substantially complete".