Queens Buildings and Liberties Bar (No. 4 of 9 buildings )

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

A row of red brick shops with slate roof, blue brick and stone dressings, forming part of a larger group of nine buildings. Each shop presents a 2-window range with a single stepped gable. The ground floors have been largely renewed, though some original detail survives, including moulded fascia brackets.

The W H Smith's building is notable for its house-style frontage introduced in the 1920s, featuring 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 here are shallow oriel bows, representing a modification to the original terrace design. The rest of the terrace retains the original design of squared oriel windows with scallop tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets, 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 reliefs 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 has a 4-centred arched doorway to the left with an ogival mullioned overlight, and leaded overlights to an inserted window to the right. There is 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 serves as an oriel over the corner, featuring 3 by 2-light mullioned windows, parapet and frieze. 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, with the date 1887. 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. However, the W H Smith's building retains a very good example of their house-style from the 1920s in both exterior and interior detail. The ceiling features 17th-century-style plasterwork including cable moulding and low relief shields and thistles. Further low relief plasterwork appears in friezes and on the wall above the stairs. The stair has a mock timber wall.