Queens Buildings and Liberties Bar (No. 8 of 9 buildings)

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

This is a Grade II listed terraced row of shops with red brick walls, slate roof, and blue brick and stone dressings. Each shop front is a 2-window range beneath a single stepped gable. The ground floors have been largely renewed, though some original details survive, including moulded fascia brackets.

The W H Smith's building is particularly notable for its house-style frontage introduced in the 1920s. This features a cast iron and glass canopy 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 this building were modified from the original design and are shallow oriel bows; the original design elsewhere in the terrace consists of squared oriel windows with scallop tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets, divided by mullions into 3 lights.

Throughout the terrace, the stepped gables are divided by outer and central angled corbelled pilasters surmounted by ball finials, and feature 2 segmentally arched windows with high set transoms and low reliefs in the tympana.

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

Interiors have been largely modernised. The W H Smith's building retains excellent examples of their 1920s house-style interior detailing, including 17th-century-style plasterwork to ceilings with cable moulding and low relief shields and thistles. Further low relief plasterwork appears in friezes and on the wall above the stairs. Mock timber walling lines the stairs.

This building is part of the group comprising Queen's Buildings Nos. 1–9 and Liberties Bar on Station Road, Colwyn Bay.