Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC (28 May 1883 – 9 April 1978) was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales.

The family have strong Welsh roots and Clough Williams-Ellis claimed direct descent from Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales.

Williams-Ellis served with distinction in the First World War, first with the Royal Fusiliers and then with the Welsh Guards as an intelligence officer attached to the Tank Corps.

[4] After the war, Williams-Ellis helped John St Loe Strachey (later his father-in-law) revive pisé construction in Britain,[5] building an apple storehouse followed by Harrowhill Copse bungalow at Newlands Corner using shuttering and rammed earth.

[8] Other work in Wales by Clough Williams-Ellis includes the Festiniog Memorial Hospital of 1922, Pentrefelin Village Hall, and the Conway Fall Cafe.

[9] In 1925, Williams-Ellis acquired the land in North Wales that would become the Italianate village of Portmeirion[10] (made famous in the 1960s as the location of the cult TV series The Prisoner, and the 1976 Doctor Who story The Masque of Mandragora).

These include the plaster ceiling from Emral Hall[11] In 1928, Williams-Ellis wrote his book England and the Octopus (published in 1928); its outcry at the urbanization of the countryside and loss of village cohesion inspired a group of young women to form Ferguson's Gang.

Shalford Mill in Surrey, Newtown Old Town Hall on the Isle of Wight and Priory Cottages in Oxfordshire were all successfully saved due to the Gang's fundraising efforts.

These include buildings at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, cottages in Cornwell, Oxfordshire, Tattenhall in Cheshire, and Cushendun, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

[9] An important later commission was the redesign and rebuilding of Nantclwyd Hall in Denbighshire Clough Williams- Ellis was equally capable in working in the Modernist idiom of the interwar years.