Beautiful Streets

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Seven Dials & Monmouth Street

Seven streets meeting at a sundial pillar, with small shops down every spoke.

Lanes & alleys

Monmouth Street, one of the seven. Photo by Peter Trimming, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Neale laid this out in the 1690s as six streets meeting at a column and then made it seven. The plan was money rather than beauty: rent was charged by frontage, and triangular plots gave him more of it. The pillar carries six dials because the column itself is the seventh. The Paving Commissioners pulled it down in 1773 to drive out undesirables and failed; this became one of the worst slums in London, and Dickens wrote about its streets darting off in all directions. The replacement went up in 1989, the spokes are full of small shops now, and Neal's Yard is a minute away.

Where
Monmouth Street, WC2H
Nearest station
Covent Garden · 3 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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