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

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

This is a row of shop buildings with residential accommodation above, constructed in red brick with a slate roof and blue brick and stone dressings. Each shop occupies a 2-window range beneath a single stepped gable. The ground floors have been largely renewed, though some original detail survives in the form of moulded fascia brackets.

The W H Smith's building features a particularly fine example of the company's house-style frontage introduced in the 1920s. This comprises a cast iron and glass canopy with stained glass pictorial roundels in the side panels and pictorial tiles to the fascia. The main windows retain Cotswold stone stall risers and leaded upper lights. The first-floor windows of this building are shallow oriel bows, which represent a modification to the original design.

The original design of the terrace, preserved in the other buildings, features squared oriel windows with scallop-tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets to the first floor. These oriel windows are divided by mullions into 3 lights. The stepped gables are divided by outer and central angled corbelled pilasters surmounted by ball finials. Each gable also contains 2 segmentally arched windows with high-set transoms and low reliefs in the tympana.

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

The interiors have been largely modernised. However, the W H Smith's building preserves a fine example of their 1920s house-style in its interior as well as its exterior. The ceilings feature 17th-century-style plasterwork including cable moulding and low relief shields and thistles. Further low relief plasterwork appears in the friezes and on the wall above the stairs. The staircase wall is finished with mock timber.