A latter-day mason's mark?

The puzzle in this photo is: when were these loggerheads put up?   

This is the early nineteenth-century building, in Dogpole in central Shrewsbury, which is still known as the Mountford Carriage Works, even though Mountford & Company had left by 1916.  (Edward Burd, the owner of next-door Newport House, seems to have disliked the noise the works made, and forced them out).

In 1917, the new owners of Newport House were the local Borough Council (who then resurrected the house’s old title - The Guildhall) and then (in the 1940s?) took over this adjacent former carriage works building.
Did they put up the loggerheads as a 'proprietorial' sign at this time?
The second theory is that the Dogpole roadway was widened outside Newport House, some time, by the borough’s engineers - who put up the loggerheads as a sign of their work - a kind of latter-day mason’s mark.

However, I’ve never found proof of either theory.  Does anyone have thoughts to add?

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Loggerheads lying about

 

The Abbey Public Gardens, by the English Bridge in Shrewsbury, doubles as a sort of monumental rockery - with fragments of antique stonework around each of its corners.
According to the book 'Public Sculpture of Worcestershire & Shropshire', the piece of decorative work in our photo is “a coat of arms showing three leopards, swags and foliage, which surmounts a collection of crossed swords, maces and fasces” (all are symbols of authority).
However, the story of this particular loggerheads set is not properly known. 

Some of the fragments in the gardens are certainly remnants of the old Shrewsbury Guildhall, which was demolished in 1834.  And there is a theory that this artwork is also from there. However, in a contemporaneous drawing (see pic below), the arms just above the doorway don't look quite the same.

Shrewsbury Guildhall 1796 by Ingelby, detail (from Wikimedia Commons)

The Abbey Gardens were originally the site of the stoneyard of John Carline The Elder (1730-95) who was both an architect and a sculptor.  He seems to have been a collector of pieces discarded from demolished buildings as well as a maker in his own right.
So, are these loggerheads a piece he found?  Or a piece he made, only for it never to be used? 

The gardens, though small, are worth a quick visit.  Among the old Guildhall stonework lying about in the gardens, is the head of Justice, and some old Ionic column capitals.

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