Seven Dials Covent Garden is a unique quarter of London whose star-shaped layout remains as constructed in the early 1690s. It was brought back to life largely through the dedication of the Seven Dials Trust, working in partnership with the local authorities and landowners for nearly forty years.

The completed dial faces, 1989.

Each face of the dialstone enables different hours of the day to be read. To achieve this it was essential for the stone to be accurately carved, gilded and, finally, placed. The dial faces were designed, carved and gilded by Caroline Webb, in her studio in Wiltshire in 1989. 

The gnomons (which cast the shadow on each dial face), the orb, the Donors' Ring and other work, were kindly sponsored by architectural ironmongers Comyn Ching & Co. who traded on Seven Dials from the early 1700s, just one of the many examples of sponsorship in-kind which were key to our success.

The one tonne dialstone rising off its pallet, ready for work on the sundials at Caroline Webb's Wiltshire workshop. It had travelled from Ashby & Horner's Essex works in a special crate.

Drawings of the dial faces taken from the Trust's fundraising brochure. Three have been sponsored to date. 

Initial drawings.

Caroline Webb on top of the scaffolding putting the finishing touches to the gilding in situ.

(L) 60 degrees east of North. (R) 60 degrees east of South.

(L) 60 degrees west of North.  (R) 60 degrees west of South.

(L) North dial.  (R) South dial.

South dial wrapped for protection.

The trustees were keen to offer meaningful training opportunities to young people, so the bulk of the work was carried out by trainee masons at Vauxhall College of Building and Ashby & Horner Stonemasonry Ltd, with assistance from the Carpenters' Company Building Craft College in Great Titchfield Street. It became one of the largest youth training projects in the UK for many years. This meant that aspects of the project took a little more time. The one tonne dialstone had to be made three times to ensure 100% accuracy of the dials faces, without which the gnomens would not cast accurate shadows and so the sundials would not be accurate.

Trainee masons making the Masonic symbol.

Trainee Tom Flemmon carving the one tonne dialstone.

The process started with making full size templates from the architect's 40-foot high paper drawings. The full size drawings enabled full size sections and bed moulds to be produced. The bed moulds for the horizontal sections were made from card paper and for the vertical sections from thin zinc sheet. They were applied to the vertical faces by the mason to give the basic line shapes as a form of template. Apart from the three shaft stones of the column, the pillar was made largely by hand as it would have been in 1693/4, using traditional wooden mallets to drive fine sharp steel tools. Machines were only used for the larger stones to cut the clocks for the outline shapes. The Pillar was made from Whitebed, one of the finest natural beds of Portland stone. This was chosen for its weathering qualities and for the ease of working some of the finer details.

Much scepticism had been expressed as to how to bridge the plethora of underground services across the Dials and, above all, how to engineer a solution which would allow for all eventualities, including the main sewer either bursting or needing repair. Structural engineers Hockley & Dawson's Roger Howard devised the ingenious solution in the drawing above. The Pillar sits on a large concrete 'stool' whose legs are deeper than the height of the Pillar. This means that, if necessary, The Dials could be excavated down to the main sewer with the Pillar remaining standing on its 'stool'. Camden carried out an electro-magnetic survey of The Dials but to explore further our intrepid architect A.D. Mason and Roger Howard descended to check the state of the Victorian main sewer. 

In the 1694, while Edward Pierce's masons were waiting for stone to arrive from Portland Bill, Dorset, the labourers and bricklayers would have been building the foundations - a simple task compared with the problems of building a piled foundation today in the middle of the road in one of the busiest areas of Central London. 

There are no surviving accounts or drawings which record the form of the foundations of either the Monument of the Fire of London in the City or for Pierce's humbler Sundial Pillar. However, the general arrangement of the foundations in Seven Dials can be reconstructed from the extensive sections of a giant brick cartwheel we encountered when building the foundations for the new Pillar in 1987.

First the labourers would have excavated an area approximately 35 feet square by ten feet deep, down to solid ground. On top of this, the bricklayers built the first stage of the foundations which consisted of a raft of brickwork, 32 feet square by three feet deep. The second stage consisted of a circular hollow drum of brickwork, 26 feet in diameter and seven feet high, braced by a series of radial walls, three feet thick, arranged like the spokes of a vast cartwheel. In the centre, underneath the pedestal of the column, the walls were strengthened further by a pyramid of rubble stonework.

The Trust was faced with a far more complex problem. An intricate web of road drains, sewers, water and, gas mains and electricity and telephone cables had proliferated below the seven roads which meet in the centre of Seven Dials. The position of these services effectively dictated the arrangement of the new foundations.

In 1987 three 60-foot deep concrete piles were constructed inside concrete sleeves which had been carefully threaded through the web of services. The piles were then connected to each other by a T-shaped arrangement of horizontal ground beams which span from pile to pile above the deep level sewers and below the services which run immediately below the surface of the road. 

Below are pictures following the sequence of the works:

Architect A.D. Mason makes an intrepid descent into the Victorian sewers that run beneath the Dials, watched by Roger Howard and assisted by Thames Water personnel.

Diagram of foundation beams (T Shape) with 40-ft piles woven between services and sewers.

Aerial View Pile Pit 1.

The Piling Team.

Piling starts.

Casting Pile 1.

View down Pile shaft.

Pit for Column Plinth.

View down Pile Pit 2.

Aerial view of Pile Pit 2.

Services exposed in Pile Pit 2.

Excavating beam tranches.

View along beam trench.

Checking reinforcements.

Casting the concrete beam.

Setting out plinth stub.

Completed plinth stub.