Queens Buildings and Liberites Bar (No. 1 of 9 buildings )

Queen's Buildings and Liberties Bar, Station Road, Colwyn Bay

This terrace of shop buildings is constructed in red brick with a slate roof and blue brick and stone dressings. Each shop unit comprises a 2-window range with a single stepped gable.

The ground floors have been largely renewed, though some original shop front details survive, including a number of moulded fascia brackets. The W H Smith's building features a particularly good example of the Smith's house-style frontage introduced in the 1920s, with a cast iron and glass canopy decorated with stained glass pictorial roundels in the side panels and pictorial tiles to the fascia. The main windows have Cotswold stone stall risers and leaded upper lights.

The first-floor windows of the W H Smith's building represent a modification to the original terrace design and take the form of shallow oriel bows. The original design, which survives in the rest of the terrace, consists of squared oriel windows with scallop-tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets. These are divided by mullions into 3 lights. The stepped gables are divided by outer and central angled corbelled pilasters surmounted by ball finials, with 2 segmentally arched windows featuring high-set transoms and low-relief decoration in the tympana.

The Liberties Bar, the lowest building in the row, is slightly different in style and was a later addition, built to incorporate public offices. It features a 4-centred arched doorway to the left with an ogival mullioned overlight, and leaded overlights to an inserted window to the right, alongside a blocked corner door similar to the main entrance. The first and second floors have 3-light mullioned and transomed windows with leaded upper panes. A canted turret projects as an oriel over the corner, containing 3 by 2-light mullioned windows, a parapet and frieze. Stone panels set into the parapet bear the names of the Denbighshire County Council, the National and Provincial Bank of England Ltd, and the Colwyn Bay and Pwllycrochan Estate Company, with the date 1887 inscribed (the building itself is dated 1892 in a raised cartouche above the parapet over the left-hand window). The turret terminates in a spirelet.

The interiors have been largely modernised. The W H Smith's building retains an excellent example of their 1920s house-style, featuring 17th-century-style plasterwork to the ceilings, including cable moulding and low-relief shields, thistles and other ornaments. Further low-relief plasterwork appears in the friezes and on the wall above the stairs. The staircase has a mock timber wall treatment.