The latest adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery is being released in January on Netflix, so this seems like the perfect time to talk about the "seven dials." While Americans and other non-natives certainly enjoy the story without knowing the background, it’s always more fun to learn a bit.
"Seven dials" are featured in various ways in the novel. In the earliest chapters, there is a practical joke involving alarm clocks. (Or "alarum clocks," as it was originally published.) In addition, the secret society is made up of seven people wearing clock-faced masks who meet at the Seven Dials Club in the Seven Dials district of London, which is the inspiration for all of this seven dials business.
During the 1700s and 1800s, many fashionable city neighborhoods were built as "squares," with elegant homes grouped around a communal park. A few neighborhoods, such as Seven Dials, were more star-like than square, with roads radiating out from a central area.
The development was built in the late 1690s by Thomas Neale, a politician, and Edward Pierce, a sculptor and stonemason. One big advantage of Seven Dials wheel-like shape over the usual square was that each building "wedge" boasted more street-side facing for shops and flats. While oddly sized for tenants, it was a boon for landlords.
In the center of the road-star was a tall column with six sides and a sundial on each side. The seventh sundial was the column itself, casting its shadow on the ground. The original column was removed as early as 1773 because it was thought to encourage loitering by riffraff. For a while, it was in private hands, but a group later modified it to be used as a monument for Princess Frederica Charlotte, who was married to the second son of George III. An exact replica of the first column currently stands in the center of Seven Dials.
Neale’s neighborhood development never became as successful as he had hoped, and before long, Seven Dials became a slum with disreputable shopkeepers, pitifully poor families, and a whole lot of crime.
Through the years, buildings were torn down and rebuilt, the streets were modified and renamed, and there was serious discussion in the 1970s about leveling it all and starting fresh. But historically-minded groups organized and were able to secure support and funding to save the Seven Dials area.
Today, if you visit Seven Dials, it’s said to be a trendy district with unique shopping and dining options, but at the time when Christie was writing The Seven Dials Mystery, it was still a rundown, dodgy place to be. For more tidbits on Seven Dials, including some interesting photos, check out this website. Someday, maybe I’ll visit the place in person, but for now, I’ll have to be content with these!
Image: Edward Walford, Old and New London: Volume 6 (London, 1878), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol6