The buses were diverted, the dual carriageway was removed, forecourts and railings were restored, and Queen Square re-emerged as a magnificent public space surrounded by high quality commercial accommodation.

[2][3] The site of Queen Square was once part of a large area of marsh land which Robert Fitzhardinge (founder of the abbey which is now Bristol Cathedral) included in its endowments.

[5] The Town Marsh became an important open recreation area, with bear-baiting and a bull ring,[4] and was also used to practice weaponry, play bowls, hang pirates, store gunpowder, and dump rubbish.

[16] The trigger for this was the arrival in Bristol of Recorder Sir Charles Wetherell, who misjudged Bristolians' support for some of his earlier positions to mean that they agreed with his opposition to the Reform Bill.

To make things worse, as soon as the dignitaries were inside the Mansion House the special constables who had been defending them set about getting their own back on the crowd, reviving the disturbance.

[19] There followed three days of rioting, looting and arson, fuelled by plentiful supplies of alcohol from the well-stocked cellars of residents, which were finally brought to a halt when Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Brereton of the 14th Dragoons led a charge with drawn swords through the mob.

[24] However, in 1937 Bristol Corporation approved the construction of a dual carriageway road diagonally across the square, from the north-west to the south-east corner, destroying its peace and tranquillity.

[25] By 1966 the corporation were looking at the possibility of reducing the flow of traffic through the square by changing the route of the Inner Circuit Road to pass along The Grove and thence across the mouth of St Augustine's Reach.

It regularly hosts outdoor theatre and cinema, music concerts, business exhibitions and other major events, and an annual petanque league run by the Queen Square Association.

Some, like the central statue, are of outstanding value in their own right; others such as No.12 are included mainly for their group value: Queen Square uses a clockwise-consecutive house numbering system, with No.1 near the middle of its north side.