to be responsible for the rebuilding of Llangoed Hall in Breconshire, one of the last country houses to be built before the First World War. While it is a mixture of a number of historic styles, it was a modern features with elements such as the chimneys derived from the work of Lutyens Other work in Wales by Clough Williams-Ellis includes the Festiniog Memorial Hospital of 1922, Pentrefelin Village Hall, the Conway Fall Cafe. In 1925, Williams-Ellis acquired the land in North Wales that would become the Italianate village of Portmeirion (made famous in the 1960s as the location of the cult TV series The Prisoner). Portmeirion is notable not only as an architectural composition, but also because Clough Williams- Ellis was able to preserve fragments from other now demolished buildings from Wales and Cheshire. These include the plaster ceiling from Emral Hall 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. They took up Williams-Ellis's call for action and from 1927 to 1946 were active in rescuing important, but lesser-known, rural properties from being demolished. 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. The Gang endowed these properties and significant tracts of the Cornish coastline to the care of the National Trust. The Gang's mastermind Peggy Pollard (known within the Gang by her pseudonym Bill Stickers) and Williams-Ellis became lifelong friends. In 1929 Williams-Ellis bought portrait painter George Romney's house in Hampstead. By the 1930s, Williams-Ellis had become a fashionable British architect; he was commissioned to create numerous works throughout the UK. These include buildings at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, cottages in Cornwell, Oxfordshire, Tattenhall in Cheshire, and Cushendun, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. During the 1930s he also designed the former summit building on Wales' highest mountain, Snowdon. However, after a reduction in window sizes (they kept blowing in) and further alterations in the 1960s and the 1980s, it was in a poor state by the end of the 20th century. Prince Charles described it as "the highest slum in Wales". Williams-Ellis served on several government committees concerned with design and conservation and was instrumental in setting up the British national parks after 1945.