18 Facts About Clough Williams-Ellis

Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales.

Clough Williams-Ellis 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.

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.

Clough Williams-Ellis's father John Clough Williams Ellis was a clergyman and noted mountaineer while his mother Ellen Mabel Greaves was the daughter of the slate mine proprietor John Whitehead Greaves and sister of John Ernest Greaves.

Clough Williams-Ellis was described as lieutenant on the day of his wedding.

In 1925, Clough Williams-Ellis acquired the land in North Wales that would become the Italianate village of Portmeirion.

Portmeirion is notable not only as an architectural composition, but because Clough Williams-Ellis was able to preserve fragments from other now demolished buildings from Wales and Cheshire.

In 1928, Clough Williams-Ellis wrote his book England and the Octopus ; its outcry at the urbanization of the countryside and loss of village cohesion inspired a group of young women to form Ferguson's Gang.

The Gang's mastermind Peggy Pollard and Clough Williams-Ellis became lifelong friends.

In 1929 Clough Williams-Ellis bought portrait painter George Romney's house in Hampstead.

Clough Williams-Ellis served on several government committees concerned with design and conservation and was instrumental in setting up the British national parks after 1945.

Clough Williams-Ellis wrote and broadcast extensively on architecture, design and the preservation of the rural landscape.

In 1958 Clough Williams-Ellis was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for public services".

Clough Williams-Ellis was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Years Honours List of 1972 "for services to the preservation of the environment and to architecture".

The second daughter, Charlotte Rachel Anwyl Clough Williams-Ellis, was a zoologist and environmentalist with a Cambridge PhD in agricultural science.

Clough Williams-Ellis married the agriculturalist Lindsay Russell Wallace in 1945, and moved to New Zealand.

Clough Williams-Ellis was killed in action and is buried at Minturno War Cemetery.