Map Of Your Village

   I have been making study of the Map of Your Village, as used in the 1960's television series the Prisoner, and I've noticed one or two things that do not quite sit right. Firstly the hospital, one of the most important buildings in the Village does not appear on any Map of Your Village! Yet, a building, which as far as I can tell is never used, that of the Palace of Fun, is marked on the map! Also, the Recreation Hall used in both episodes of The Chimes of Big Ben and The Schizoid Man is also not on the map. Could it be that the Recreation Hall stands in for what would have been the Palace of Fun - a place where you could gamble in the Casino, put on Amateur dramatics, musical concerts, exhibitions, and entertainment of all kinds - a place where citizens can go and enjoy themselves, that's according to the original brief on the Village.

    What's more, on the black and white map, none of the buildings are denoted by script, only on the colour map, which is technically no more detailed, yet larger and much more expensive. I have observed, in the past, how a black and white map has been reproduced which has text denoting all the major building in the Village. This is a mistake, and not accurate. In more recent years two attempts have been made to reproduce the colour Map of Your Village, once by one Roger Langely, and the second for the Prisoner part-work produced by De Agostini in 2004, a copy of both dwells within my collection. I much perfer the De Agostini Map of Your Village, because it's not been done in water colour like Langley's, who on the back of his map reproduction goes into great deal in describing just how he produced his Map of Your Village, which I have to say I found to be most tedious, and could see no reason for it. Best would it have been to just leave the back of the map blank, as in with the original.
   Back in the 1980's, when I first stayed as a guest at Portmeirion, I purchased a map of Your Village, a black and white one, which bore some resemblence to Portmeirion in some areas. On the back of that black and white map, is an ordinance survey map of the woodland area of Portmeirion which is very accurate indeed.
I'm Piet Hein