Old Station Hotel, Llandudno Junction
Old Station Hotel, Conway Road, Llandudno Junction
This building has long been called “The Killer” by local people. Railway employees or passengers would “kill time” here until their next duty or while waiting to catch a train. The railway was once the dominant employer in Llandudno Junction.
The hotel, in mock-Tudor style, opened in 1898, a year after the London & North Western Railway opened its new station on the opposite side of Conway Road. The original station was a little further west.
In 1900 proprietor Robert Blackwell advertised “The New Station Hotel” as “the most convenient and centrally-situated Hotel in North Wales.” In the same year, one of the hotel’s first barmen, Roger Wilson, was killed in a railway accident. He had left his hotel job to become a railway porter five weeks earlier. He was carrying lamps across the railway near Llandudno signal box when he was struck by an empty train which was being backed into the station.
In 1905 a young Colwyn Bay driver, Hugh Morris, was trampled to death by a horse outside the Station Hotel. The horse had pulled a heavy lurry (four-wheeled flatbed cart) to the hotel. It bolted after Mr Morris, 22, had detached it so that it could drink from a bucket of water, held by the “boots” of the hotel (a servant who helped guests to remove their boots).
In 1907 the Vale of Conway Fanciers’ Association held its first meeting at the hotel, for people interested in “dogs, poultry, pigeons, cage birds &c”. The North Wales Coast Football Association often met at the hotel. In January 1910 officials considered a protest from Conway football club that Flint had “played professionals”.
From 1940 to 1943 the man in charge of Britain’s food supply slept at the Station Hotel on many nights. Lord Woolton, Minister of Food, spent much of the Second World War in Colwyn Bay, where the Ministry of Food had been evacuated. Since the town’s hotels had been requisitioned for different food departments, he commuted from Llandudno Junction when not required in London.
Postcode: LL31 9NE
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