(b Gayton, Northants, 28 May 1883; d Plas Brondanw, Gwynedd, 8 April 1978). English architect. The son of a clergyman and Cambridge don, he was brought up in North Wales and studied at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, proceeding without a degree to spend a short time at the Architectural Association School in London. He was in private practice in London and Wales from 1905 and designed many small, mostly residential buildings before 1914, completing the enlargement of Llangoed Castle, Powys, and embarking on the creation of a formal garden at Plas Brondanw, the 17th-century house he had inherited and restored. In the 1920s, after war service in the Welsh Guards and the Royal Tank Corps, he became a fashionable architect and decorator, adopting a light classical style with an imaginative use of colour. As well as many house designs, his work at this time included Bishop's Stortford School Memorial Hall (1922), the First Church of Christ Scientist (1927), Belfast, and the Lloyd George Memorial (1948), Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd. He also designed schools, hospitals, hotel buildings and new village centres including Cushendun (1910-25), Co. Antrim, and Cornwell (1939), Oxon; but perhaps his best-known work was the creation of the village of Portmeirion in Gwynedd (from 1926), based on an extension to an existing hotel. This project enabled him to combine his interests as architect and propagandist for sensitive development of the environment (see fig.). The colour-washed buildings are grouped in a picturesque manner with great respect for the wooded site, which borders a tidal estuary; the buildings also reveal an interest in Mediterranean building and traditional construction, and many incorporate items salvaged from demolished buildings.
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