Queen Anne's Walk

Here cargoes shipped from around the world, including notably tobacco from the North American colonies, would arrive and be sold to awaiting Barnstaple merchants, who were accustomed to seal deals by touching the 17th century so-called Tome Stone, a low stone circular bargaining table, with inscriptions around the rim of the names of three leading merchants, including Delbridge.

(The ancient building known as the "Three Tuns Inn" on the west side of Barnstaple High Street[10] is in 2015 now the Pizza Express restaurant[11][12]).

Underneath the statue, possibly intended to be free-standing and not on top of this building, is its original base, now seated somewhat incongruously above the Royal Arms.

The imagery is reminiscent of the sculptures of two French captives atop the central pediment of Blenheim Palace, built for the Duke of Marlborough, the victorious English commander at that battle.

Immediately below the feet of the Queen is a tablet on which is inscribed the following Latin text:[15] The inscription was transcribed by the Devon topographer Rev.

[21] In 1866 the "small quay" nearby was filled in following complaints about the "stink from the mud", and on the site was later built the surviving Strand bus station, in the style of Queen Anne's Walk.

As the contemporary brass tablet affixed to the east parapet suggests, they represent the members of the Corporation of Barnstaple, viri ipsi ornatissimi & honorabiles, "men themselves honourable and most illustrious", who financed the building work.

Nine of them are members of a tightly-knit group closely related by blood or marriage, namely: Acland, Hooper, Basset, Davie, Clevland, Chichester, both Incledons and Lethbridge (see pedigree chart illustration).

In 1913 the arms shown on the entablature were repeated on twelve small escutcheons and crests in coloured enamels on small decorative brass plates stamped "PARTRIDGE 1913" made by May Hart Partridge (born c.1881 in Harborne, Staffordshire – died 1917), an art enameller who studied at the Birmingham School of Art.