Lady's Lodge

Lady's Lodge (1938-39, listed Grade II, 1971) was probably the last pre-war building at Portmeirion (mentioned in the 1939 Guide Book). Originally built as a lock up garage it is one of a pair of Baroque shops with stuccoed walls, pantiled roof and small shop windows of Georgian character. The gables are shaped with scroll sides. The semi circular mural above the bay window is by Hans Feibusch. Susan Williams-Ellis contributed a Byzantine coronation mural in 1956 (below left) but this has not survived and the alcove was opened to form a window.

On conversion to a shop in the early 1960s it was first called Battery Stores and then The Peacock. Both signs are featured in The Prisoner. This was the village shop in the series however the interiors were filmed in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios at Borehamwood. Below Lady's Lodge is a lead sundial in the shape of a cherub (listed Grade II in 1971). The Shop is now called Siop Bach (Little Shop). Above it is Lady's Lodge Beauty Parlour.

Across the road from Lady's Lodge, directly below the Dome, is a pantiled loggia (1963/4, listed Grade II 1971) which houses a gilt statue of the Buddha which Clough salvaged from the relics of a film shoot. Part of the Inn of the Sixth Happiness was shot around Clough's outlook tower at Plas Brondanw in 1958 where Miss Ingrid Bergman fled through a Chinese cemetery, pursued by Japanese soldiers. The Tower had been transformed into a pagoda surrounded by Chinese tombstones and bits of traditional craftsmanship inscribed by a Chinese archaeologist. Characteristic Chinese buildings, including a fortified hilltop town, were fabricated, as well as part of the Great Wall of China in the Nantmor valley. Clough intended that the immense plaster Buddha should adorn a bamboo grove at Portmeirion but later decided that sheltered accommodation would be more appropriate.