4860

 

II  

Designated  

14/01/1971  

23/08/2002  

Mermaid  

 

Gwynedd  

Penrhyndeudraeth  

 

Portmeirion  

258942  

337169  

 

Located in the centre of the village to the W of the Central Piazza.  

Domestic  

 

Portmeirion was designed and laid out by the celebrated architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) following his purchase of the estate, then called Aber Iâ, in 1926. The village evolved over several decades and was still being added to in the 1970s. Mermaid was originally built c1840 and served the neighbouring house of Aber Ia (now the hotel) as a gardener's cottage. The cottage, one of four buildings to pre-date CWE's constructed village, was `Cloughed-up' (his term) in 1926. He `...dolled-up the gardener's bothey, which was pretty delapidated, in a sort of late C18 Gothic mood.' The adjoining Virgin and Child sculpture is attributed to Gabriel Grupello (1644-1730).  

Two-storey cottage in picturesque Regency-Gothic style; of whitened rubble construction under a slate roof with oversailing eaves and decorative cusped bargeboards; two central chimneys with paired, off-set stacks and pots, one stack missing. The eastern elevation, facing the Central Piazza, has three ground floor entrances with small-pane glazed doors; those to the R each have 2-light latticed windows to the first floor above. The W side has a central gable with smaller flanking gables, all with decorative bargeboards. The central gable contains an arched multi-pane casement, whilst the flanking ones cover dormer windows of latticed type which barely break the eaves. Further asymmetricaly-placed small-pane windows to the ground floor. The southern gable end has a Regency-style verandah with 4 decorative iron pilasters and a sloped metal roof. Adjoining the plain N gable end is a decorative iron canopy covering a painted baroque wooden sculpture of the Virgin and Child.  

 

Listed as a mid C19 former gardener's cottage embellished by the eminent architect and conservationist Sir Clough Williams-Ellis to form part of his visionary Portmeirion villiage. Group value with other listed items at Portmeirion.