Why is Seven Dials called Seven Dials?

The streets were laid out in the early 1690s by Thomas Neale, a property developer and Member of Parliament. The stonemason Edward Pierce built the pillar for him in 1693 and 1694. The one standing there now is a copy, put up in 1989. The original was taken away in 1773 and has stood on a green in Surrey since 1822.

Thomas Neale's star

Neale was a man of many schemes. He was Master of the Royal Mint, and in 1694 he ran a state lottery that raised a million pounds. When he died in 1699, his job at the Mint went to Isaac Newton.

His plan for these fields north of Covent Garden began with six streets meeting at a point. It grew to seven. On 5 October 1694 the diarist John Evelyn came to look. He wrote that "seven streets make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle".

Neale hoped wealthy families would move in, as they had to Covent Garden Piazza. They didn't. By the 1800s Seven Dials was one of the most notorious slums in London. Charles Dickens wrote about its tangle of lanes in Sketches by Boz.

Why are there only six dials?

The usual answer is that the pillar itself is the seventh dial. A sundial needs a pointer to cast its shadow. Standing in the middle of a round open space, the column could act as one, throwing its shadow onto the ground around it.

An older explanation, from a Victorian history of London, is more practical. Two of the seven streets open into the same angle of the junction, so six faces were enough for all seven streets. Neither story can be proved, and both are still told.

What happened to the original pillar

The pillar came down in 1773. For a long time the blame went to an angry mob, or to people digging for treasure believed to be buried under its base. More recent research points to the local paving commissioners. They took it down to stop it being a gathering place for what they called undesirables.

The architect James Paine kept the pieces at his house in Addlestone, in Surrey. In 1820 the Duchess of York died at Oatlands, her home near Weybridge. Local people paid to put the column up on Weybridge's green as her memorial, in 1822. A ducal coronet took the place of the dial stone. So a pillar removed for attracting the wrong crowd ended up honouring a duchess.

In 1989 a charity rebuilt the pillar at Seven Dials, to Pierce's original design. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands unveiled it in June that year. The streets had been laid out under William III, the Dutch prince who became king of England, and it was the 300th anniversary of his reign.

Where to stand

The pillar stands on a small island in the middle of the roundabout, where the seven streets meet. Look up at the dial stone near the top and count the faces. There are six, each with its own blue dial.

Hear it where it happened

The Trevlo tour of Covent Garden and Seven Dials tells this story at the sundial pillar, its third stop. It begins at the Covent Garden market hall and walks up Neal Street. After the pillar it visits Neal's Yard and Shorts Gardens, and ends at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Six stops, about twenty-eight minutes of listening, at your own pace.

The first stop is free to play on this page, and your first tour in the app is free.