Plas Brondanw
Encyclopedia
Gwynedd
Gwynedd is a county in north-west Wales, named after the old Kingdom of Gwynedd. Although the second biggest in terms of geographical area, it is also one of the most sparsely populated...
, North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
, was the family home of Clough Williams-Ellis
Clough Williams-Ellis
Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC was an English-born Welsh architect known chiefly as creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales.-Origins, education and early career:...
, creator of the Italianate
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...
village Portmeirion
Portmeirion
Portmeirion is a popular tourist village in Gwynedd, North Wales. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village and is now owned by a charitable trust....
, and elements of similar architectural styles can be seen at both locations.
Plas Brondanw stands on the road to the tiny village of Croesor
Croesor
Croesor is a small village in Gwynedd, Wales. It is located at the foot of Cnicht, in Cwm Croesor, in the community of Llanfrothen. The Croesor Tramway travelled along the bed of the cwm, before rising steeply to Bwlch Rhosydd via Croesor Incline...
and the distinctive Snowdonia
Snowdonia
Snowdonia is a region in north Wales and a national park of in area. It was the first to be designated of the three National Parks in Wales, in 1951.-Name and extent:...
mountain named Cnicht
Cnicht
Cnicht is a mountain in Snowdonia which forms part of the Moelwynion mountain range.Its appearance when viewed from the south-west, i.e. from the direction of Porthmadog, has earned it the sobriquet the "Matterhorn of Wales". In reality Cnicht is a long ridge and, at 689 m, is the 5th highest...
.
Williams-Ellis inherited the run-down Plas Brondanw from his father in 1908, when he was aged 25, and set about restoring both the house and the gardens. The house itself had by this time been split into apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
s, and the garden had been turned into allotment
Allotment (gardening)
An allotment garden, often called simply an allotment, is a plot of land made available for individual, non-professional gardening. Such plots are formed by subdividing a piece of land into a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families...
s.
In 1951 the property was badly damaged by fire, and this event, and the subsequent restoration of the property, is commemorated by a flaming urn statue, mounted at the top of a waterfall.
Also across the road, but within the grounds of Plas Brondanw, Williams-Ellis had constructed a folly
Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...
named Folly Castle. A plaque records that the castle was "a wedding present from the Welsh Guards
Welsh Guards
The Welsh Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Guards Division.-Creation :The Welsh Guards came into existence on 26 February 1915 by Royal Warrant of His Majesty King George V in order to include Wales in the national component to the Foot Guards, "..though the order...
to Clough Williams-Ellis and Amabel Strachey in 1915." Located on a small hill, it affords good views of the surrounding landscape. Scenes from the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness and the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
film The Five Doctors
The Five Doctors
The Five Doctors is a special feature-length episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, produced in celebration of the programme's twentieth anniversary. It had its world premiere in the United States, on the Chicago PBS station WTTW and various other PBS member stations...
were filmed at the folly.
The gardens are open to the public for a small fee. The former stable building was converted into a cafe and craft shop in 2011 BBC news north west Wales.