Priors Lodging, Spa and Pilot
Chart Room (1927) was a ground floor garage for use of the
occupants of Battery. Many of Clough's cottages of the 1920s and
1930s had garages on the ground floor but they tended to be too
small for post war cars which anyhow no longer needed covered
parking. From 1953 onwards these spaces were converted into shops
or additional accommodation by Clough's daughter Susan and her
husband Euan Cooper-Willis in order to improve the village's
viability. In this instance the space was made into a family room.
The Plaque on the wall outside Chart Room is a piece of concrete
statuary cast from a clay mould and titled "Sculpture" by Mr
Gilbert
Bayes. It is one of three displayed at the
British Empire Exhibition and illustrated in The Builder for
January 9, 1925. The Chart Room was in 2011 developed as the
Mermaid Spa.
Pilot House (1930, listed Grade II 1971) was built to connect Toll House and Battery in the same weather boarded seaside style as Battery. It has wide metal framed windows overlooking the estuary and consists of two suites, one above the other. Like many buildings at Portmeirion it has a vaguely nautical name.
Prior's Lodging (1929; listed Grade II 1971) is a small cottage of two storeys with sprocket eaves and a pantile roof. The seaward side has three tall narrow round headed windows from floor to ceiling. The ground floor originally housed a garage. Above this, through a baroque Italian doorway from Clough's old London studio is a twin bedroom and bathroom with small single bedroom. The front door is worthy of note. It is actually one of three acquired by Clough (one is at Plas Brondanw and the other at Castle Yard). Clough explains the rather pious sounding name as follows: "'Prior's Lodging' because its first tenant twenty-five years ago chanced to be the Prior of the Monastery set on the charming island of Caldy off the Pembroke coast."
