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Seven Dials is a road junction in the West End of London at the intersection of Monmouth Street, Shorts Gardens, Earlham Street, Mercer Street and Upper St Martin's Lane. At the centre of the junction is a 40-foot-high pillar bearing six sundials. The seventh sundial is the pillar itself.
The original sundial pillar was laid out in the early 1690s by Thomas Neale who commissioned England's leading stonemason, Edward Pierce, to design and construct it. The original pillar was regarded as one of London's great public ornaments, but it was deliberately demolished in 1773 in an attempt to rid the area of undesirables who congregated around it.
In 1984, The Seven Dials Monument Charity (now The Seven Dials Trust) was established to restore the sundial pillar and a replacement pillar was constructed in 1989. With the aid of an astronomer, each of the six sundial faces was adjusted to be accurate to within ten seconds.
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