1. Former Cosy Cinema, 6 Conway Road, Colwyn Bay
This is the site of the first chapel in Colwyn Bay, Capel Cyntaf. The rear wall of the chapel can still be seen, if you walk along the back alley between Penrhyn Road and Station Road.
When the Welsh community built their new chapel, Engedi, in Woodland Road West, the renowoned local architect Sydney Colwyn Foulkes was commissioned (c.1925) to design a building with a small, bijou cinema on the ground floor. The building included offices above, which became his own office. His secretary, Audrey Lee, used to listen to the film being shown below her office while she typed.
The three-row balcony can still be seen inside the present hardware store. The screen was suspended on the inside of the front wall, so that as you entered the cinema you looked directly at the audience. The cinema closed in the late 1950s and has been a shop ever since. The current occupier, Matthews & Son Hardware, is a traditional ironmongers’ shop famous locally for holding what seems an impossibly comprehensive stock for such a small building.
Matthews Hardware Store
On Conway Road opposite the HSBC bank and above Matthews Hardware store was another of the town’ s cinemas. Originally called the Colwyn Bay Cinema, it later became the Cosy and by 1937 was owned by the Kenyon Family who also owned the Princess Cinema. It closed in 1955 but is affectionately remembered as the cinema with the double seats in the back row – ideal for courting!
What you could watch at the Cosy Cinema:
During the Second World War, in August 1940, the film being shown was Night Train to Munich, starring Rex Harrison and Margaret Lockwood. Later in the same month it was Arouse and Beware, starring Wallace Beery and Dolores Del Rio.
2. Former Pwllycrochan Estate office, 37-39 Conway Road (incidentally, the Pwllycrochan Road is not where the Estate office is, but my doctors surgery aka office is on this road, the name I can't pronounce)
If you look at the top of the building you will see the words “Estate Office” engraved into the stonework. The Estate was the Pwllycrochan Estate which in 1865 was owned by Sir John Pender, a promoter of ocean cables. He appointed John Porter as his agent and 10 years later sold the Pwllycrochan Hotel to him outright.
The Estate ran from Cherry Tree Lane to Pwllycrochan Avenue and the Old Highway to Conway Road. It was managed from this building by a Colwyn Bay surveyor, John Merry Porter. He was the son of the hotel’s owner. He managed the estate on behalf of its owners at the time, architect Lawrence Booth and businessman Thomas Chadwick. Mr Booth is responsible for the design of many of the more distinguished buildings in Colwyn Bay.
It is now home to Mayfair of Colwyn Bay, which has been selling clothes in Colwyn Bay since the 1940s.
3. Former WS Wood department store, Station Road, Colwyn Bay
If you look down Station Road you will notice that the buildings on the left hand side, between the Central Pub at the top and the Imperial at the bottom, were all designed and built in the same style in the second half of the 19th century. The original buildings on the right hand (east) side were built in a higgledy-piggledy way, all designed differently at the beginning of the 19th century.
In the early 1920s, an entrepreneur called William Stead Wood arrived in Colwyn Bay from Yorkshire. He bought two of the original buildings on the east side of Station Road and opened a department store, selling every conceivable sort of clothing. After about seven years he asked his friend Sydney Colwyn Foulkes to design a new building. This is the building you see today, which was erected on the site of Mr Wood’s original buildings. It was opened in 1933.
The front of the building is clad in Portland Stone, an idea suggested by a Mr Peake, who ran the firm making the high quality Rodex coats. For some years in the 1990s it was owned and run by the Co-op. Today it is home to the Colwyn Bay branch of Cardiff-based clothing retailer Peacocks, which was acquired in 2012 by Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
4. Former police station and municipal offices, Station Road, Colwyn Bay
In 1887 (as the date at the top of the building indicates) this building housed the town’s police station and offices of the Colwyn Bay Estate Company Ltd, Denbighshire County Council, the National Provincial Bank and the Colwyn Bay & Colwyn Board.
The names of the non-police organisations are inscribed on stone tablets at the top of the building, just below the turret. The emblems of each organisation – the Welsh feathers, a lion, the letters NB and the oak tree – are also carved into the stonework.
To see evidence of this being a police station in the past, look above the right-hand doorway – where you can see handcuffs carved in the stone. The building to the left was built in 1892. The date is on the stone pediment at the top of the building.
In the 1940s the building housed confectioners called the Black Boy Chocolate Company, a name that would be frowned on today! The building reopened after refurbishment in 2013. The ground-floor café and bistro, called Porter’s, features old photos of the area and allows the public to appreciate the decorative coloured glass along the front windows.
5. St Cystennin's Church, Llangystennin, Mochdre
The church was built in 1843 at a cost of £780 on the site of what was known as North Wales’ oldest and smallest church. It is generally believed that the original church dates from 338 AD, and legend has it that the foundation stone was laid by a Welsh princess who married a member of Rome’s powerful Constantine family.
Some historians say the church is dedicated to Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity. Others say the dedication is to Cystennin, son of the Breton king Cynvor. Another theory is that the dedication is to Cystennin Fendigaid, chieftain of the Britons.
Portions of the stained glass in the existing church date from the 14th century. The Resurrection window is now kept in Llandudno Museum. The east window was produced by Herbert Bryans (1856-1925), a specialist in ecclesiastical stained glass. His rebus (signature mark) is a running greyhound, visible in the east window’s bottom right corner.
Near the church door is gravestone bearing a skull and crossbones. This is unlikely to denote the grave of a pirate, however. The emblem was commonly shown on tombs in the 18th century.
Members of the congregation and local volunteers are conserving the churchyard as a wildlife habitat, encouraging wildflowers. Local schools have made bird nesting boxes and bat boxes for the churchyard. The largest yew in the churchyard has a circumference of c.7 metres, suggesting it could be 700 years old.
Llangystennin, once a parish in its own right, is now one of seven churches in the benefice of Rhos-Cystennin, which takes its name from two of Wales’ oldest parishes (Llanrhos and Llangystennin). Anglican services are held in the church each Sunday morning.
6. St Paul’s Church, Conway Road, Colwyn Bay
Originally Colwyn Bay was part of the Parish of Llandrillo-yn-Rhos and the Rev Venables Williams looked after the souls of the area. In the cemetery of Llandrillo church are the graves of countless people who lived in Colwyn Bay. The Rev Venables Williams had expected his sphere of influence to be greatly enhanced with the building of St Paul’s Church. He was upset therefore when the new Parish of Colwyn Bay was formed by an Order in Council on 15 May 1893.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners endowed the new parish with £120 a year. John Douglas designed the church. He also designed the vicarage, St David’s Church in Colwyn Bay, St John’s Church in Old Colwyn, Christ Church in Bryn-y-Maen and the original Colwyn Bay Hotel.
The nave of St Paul’s Church was consecrated on 13 July 1888 and the chancel on 7 April 1895. The tower was added 15 years later. This was to John Douglas’ design, after he had died.
The expenditure on the entire church was £12,800. The vicarage cost an additional £2,210. The vicar no longer lives in the vicarage beside the church but in a new house on Walshaw Avenue.
The south rose window in the church is the gift of the Dinglewood School pupils, a school which no longer exists. The pulpit was made by Edward Allen JP as his gift.
7. Old court house, Rhiw Road, Colwyn Bay
This building is now home to Bay of Colwyn Town Council, but it was originally built in 1907 as the town’s court house, with the police station attached. It was designed by the county architect, Walter Wiles, after the design by the county surveyor, R Lloyd Williams, was rejected. It ceased being used by the court service on 20 December 1996. In its heyday it was where the Petty Sessional Courts were held.
The police station was originally designed to house the Chief Superindendent of Police and his family. His front door was on the corner of Rhiw Road and the small back road leading to Douglas Road.
The court was an imposing room, in the middle of which was the dock to hold the defendents who emerged up the stairs from the cells below. On a high raised platform at the front of the court were seven seats for seven magistrates to sit at any one time. There are now a maximum of three in any court. On the desk in front of the magistrates, right up until the court closed for good, were seven ink wells.
Inside the town council offices is a brass nameplate from the LMS steam locomotive called Colwyn Bay, withdrawn in the 1960s. This was one of seven locos of the Royal Scot class named after towns on the North Wales coast. Members of the public can view the plate, and an informative display about the loco, during town council office hours.
8. The Mountain View and Swan Inn
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| The Mountain View in 1905 |
The reason these pubs are situated here is that this was the original route of the horse-drawn coaches along the Old Highway in the early 19th century. The Old Highway was the main thoroughfare round the back of Colwyn Bay, which was dotted with smithies and with hostelries such as the Mountain View.
Opposite the Mountain View, on the corner of Old Conway Road and Chapel Street, is the former Swan Inn. If you look up at the chimney you will see a wooden cut-out in the shape of a swan. The Swan Inn pre-dates the Mountain View and is no longer a pub.
In 1880 a young kleptomaniac called John Jones was apprehended in a bed in the Swan Inn, after his sensational escape from Ruthin jail. Nicknamed “Coch Bach y Bala” (little redhead from Bala), he was regarded by some as a folk hero. He escaped from prisons three times, the last time at the age of 60 years.
Just round the corner from the Mountain View is 6 Tanrallt Street which is named Smithy Cottage, because behind it, in the barn you can still see, was the smithy.
The Mountain View was fortunate because when the Old Conway Road was constructed the pub was still on the main road. It was not until the 1930s, when the new Conway Road was built, that it was cut off from the passing trade. In 1905 when the May Queen, the future Mrs Walter Jones, stepped out of her carriage outside the Mountain View her large dress blew up in the wind showing her red felt petticoat: ever after she was nicknamed “Sue pais goch” (Sue red underskirt).
PS: Other CRIME HIPoints in this area:
Penmaenbach - site of a woman's sensational attempt to fake her death in 1909
Bryniau Farm, near Deganwy - a German PoW assaulted a fellow worker here for calling him a Nazi
Old St Asaph court house and police station - a female murderer was among the felons dealt with here
9. St Catherine's Church, Old Colwyn
This church was built in 1837 as a Chapel of Ease to Llandrillo Church, in Rhos-on-Sea. Seven years later, it became the centre of a seperate parish in its own right. The land was given to the church by John Lloyd Wynne of Coed Coch, who also gave his name to Wynne Avenue which runs across his old Estate.
As the inscriptions on the gravestones suggest, St Catherine’s catered for the Welsh-speaking residents. As more people settled in the area who could not speak Welsh, St John the Baptist Church was opened in 1903 to provide services in English.
The east window at St Catherine’s was given to the church by the widow of Richard Butler Clough. The clock in the tower was installed in 1890, in memory of a former Vicar, the Rev JD Jones (1866-1887). The large house across the road, which has now been split up into flats for elderly people, was built at a cost of £500, in 1871, as the vicarage.
In 2012, St Catherine’s Church closed for worship. Services continue to be held at St John the Baptist Church, in Station Road.
10. The Imperial Hotel, Station Road
For many years, around 1900, this building and the one at the top of Station Road, The Central (originally known as the Station Hotel), were the only buildings on this side of Station Road; between them were fields where cattle grazed. The Imperial was built as an hotel during Colwyn Bay's heyday as a summer holiday destination. It has always been known locally as “The Imp”. In its early years it was a prestigious establishment, mainly due to its proximity to the railway station.
In 1939 the Imperial, along with many other hotels in Colwyn Bay, was taken over by the Ministry of Food. The Merchant Navy Control Department had offices in the Imperial, from where the officials monitored the ships going into and out of Liverpool.
It was also here that Ministry officials attempted to assess the public’s dietary requirements, with a view to producing a ration book which would be acceptable to the British people.
After the war the hotel never returned to its former glory. The bedrooms remained empty and the bulk of the business was concentrated on the ground-floor bar.
11. Former BBC wartime studio, Penrhyn Road
This building, known as Penrhyn Buildings, was erected at the start of the 20th century for shop and office use. On the first floor of this unit, however, a restaurant was opened called the Lantern Café.
At the beginning of the Second World War the cafe was closed on the orders of the Government and the first floor was taken over, secretly, by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was to be used as a clandestine communication post in the event of a German invasion of Great Britain. A soundproofed control room was created. The broadcasting equipment was linked to transmitters across Britain and maintained in good order throughout the conflict.
Among the men who worked here were two brothers who had both received the Military Cross for outstanding gallantry during their service in the First World War. One of them had a bar with his cross, denoting a second instance of gallantry. The brother without a bar was jokingly nicknamed “the coward”.
Fortunately there was never a need to broadcast from the BBC studio. All the equipment remained in place for a few years after the war, then the first floor reverted to its original use. The café closed in the 1980s. The building is now home to Alpha Business Centre.
12. Former Ellesmere Hotel, 94 Conway Road
For many years before 1939 this building was used as an hotel or 'boarding house' with private apartments. The business was advertised as being "situated in the best part of Colwyn Bay with lovely views of Wood and Mountain". The business was originally run by Mrs Bush and Miss Reynolds, but by the beginning of the Second World War it was in the hands of Mr & Mrs RTW Allen.
In 1939 the Ministry of Food told to them find alternative accommodation, and all the residents and holidaymakers had to leave. The Ministry then ran the important Legal & Enforcement Department from the building. A team of officials based in the Ellesmere Hotel roamed throughout the British Isles checking whether food which could be eaten by people was, in contravention of the rules, being given to livestock. Many farmers who were discovered breaking this rule were taken to court, and the prosecutions were conducted from the Ellesmere Hotel.
After the war, like other such establishments, it was never again to become successful as an hotel. It is now used by a Conwy County Borough Council’s social services department.
13. The Rothesay Hotel
The building was constructed as an hotel at around the close of the 19th century. It was one of a string of prestigious hotels along this stretch of the promenade. Its size gives you a vivid illustration of the thriving holiday business which Colwyn Bay once attracted. Today the building is given over to flat accommodation and the Daffodil Day Care Centre.
In 1939 the hotel was taken over by the Ministry of Food and remained in their hands for the duration of the Second World War. Part of the hotel was given over to the Canned Condensed Milk Division.
Mr Lyons of the London Corner Houses was in charge. Oddly, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands came to visit the workers during the war. The Ministry officials in the Rothesay were envied for their proximity to the promenade, where they could go for a stroll during their lunch break. However, they were not allowed to venture onto the beach – which was out of bounds to everyone except military personnel.
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