Queens Buildings and Liberties Bar (No. 2 of 9 buildings)

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

This is a terrace of shops with red brick and slate roofing, featuring blue brick and stone dressings. Each shop presents a 2-window range beneath a single stepped gable. The ground floors have been largely renewed, though some original detail survives, including moulded fascia brackets from the shop fronts.

The W H Smith's building displays an excellent example of the company's house style introduced in the 1920s. Its exterior features a cast iron and glass canopy topped 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 terrace's original design.

The rest of the terrace retains the original design: squared oriel windows with scallop-tiled lean-to roofs supported on curved brackets to the first floor, the windows divided by mullions into 3 lights. 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 relief ornament in the tympana.

The Liberties Bar at the lowest end of the row is stylistically distinct 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; a blocked corner door echoes the main entrance. The first and second floors have 3-light mullioned and transomed windows with leaded upper panes. A canted turret rises over the corner as an oriel, containing 3 by 2-light mullioned windows, a parapet and frieze, and terminating 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 Limited, and the Colwyn Bay and Pwllycrochan Estate Company, together with the date 1887. The building itself is dated 1892, as shown in a raised cartouche above the parapet over the left-hand window.

The interiors have been largely modernised. The W H Smith's building retains an excellent example of their 1920s house style interior as well as exterior: the ceilings feature 17th-century-style plasterwork including cable moulding and low relief ornament such as shields and thistles. Further low relief plasterwork appears in friezes and above the stairs. The stairway wall is finished with mock timber.