Queens Buildings and Liberties Bar (No. 5 of 9 buildings)

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

This terrace of late 19th-century shops is built in red brick with a slate roof and features blue brick and stone dressings. Each shop unit presents a 2-window range with 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 retains an exceptionally fine example of the company's 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 represent a modification to the original terrace design and take the form of shallow oriel bows. The original design, which survives across the rest of the terrace, features squared oriel windows with scallop-tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets. These original oriels are divided by mullions into 3 lights. The stepped gables are divided by outer and central angled corbelled pilasters surmounted by ball finials, and incorporate 2 segmentally arched windows with high-set transoms and low reliefs in the tympana.

The lowest building, Liberties Bar, differs slightly in style as 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 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, and the date 1887. The building itself is dated 1892 over the left-hand window in a raised cartouche above the parapet. The turret terminates in a spirelet.

Interiors have been largely modernised. The W H Smith's building retains a very fine example of the company's 1920s house-style interior design as well as exterior detail. The ceilings feature 17th-century-style plasterwork, including cable moulding and low relief shields, thistles and similar ornament. Further low relief plasterwork appears in friezes and in the wall above the stairs. A mock timber wall is present at the stairs.