Talk:Seven Dials, London

Comments

The column itself is the seventh dial = so only needs six faces.

Seven Dials remains one of outstanding examples of "shared space" in the UK, allowing an informal mixing of traffic flows with pedestrian activity. Ben Hamilton-Baillie

Seven Dials is also the name of a mystery book by Anne Perry in which some of the action is set in the Seven Dials area. Should we add a section on literary references? --CocoaZen 02:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe Seven Dials is mentioned in the Stephen Stills song Treetop Flier, though I've seen it as "seven dial", "seven isles"...if anyone wants to research it and it perhaps add this mention, could they? Thanks. Zchris87v 17:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I second the suggestion that a Literary Reference section be set up by someone more expert at these things. Included should be C.S. Forester's Lieutenant Hornblower (1951 Curtis Publishing) "A ship of war manned for active service was the most crowded place in the world - more crowded than the most rundown tenement in Seven Dials..." Trucker11 (talk) 11:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Rename article to 'Seven Dials, London'

When there is an article about Seven Dials, Brighton why should this article be named without reference to the city it is located? I believe that 'seven dials' should be a redirection page to 'seven dials, london'. —— _D^an_d^or ⁱ_D (talk) 19:13, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done - Disambiguation page from Seven Dials. Jimthing (talk) 17:09, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

That was an ill-considered move. The WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of "Seven Dials" is the neighbourhood in London, and a hatnote at Seven Dials, Brighton would have sufficed. Now there are several dozen entries, previously OK, linking to this disambiguation page. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Not ill-considered at all. The London area does not have sort of precedence on WP in the use of the name over the Brighton area; each is equally likely to be the term one may be searching for, along with others since added. Hence it should have been correct to begin with, instead of conflating the error across site. Jimthing (talk) 11:04, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Column description

“The sundial column was built with only six faces, with the column itself acting as the gnomon of the seventh dial.”

???

How does that work? Some description needed; maybe add to the useful section with the info on how to read the dials. 2A00:23C7:E284:CF00:4192:C75A:7E51:7ABC (talk) 12:18, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

There are 6 sundials on the column, and the column itself acts as the 7th thing that casts a shadow, thus forming the 7th dial. How would you propose to phrase that encyclopedically? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:45, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

"... where misery clings to misery for a little warmth ..."

The article says:

... The poet John Keats described the area as the last resort for the poor and the ill.

... where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side-by-side, and groan together.

John Keats didn't write the quoted words, whatever the cited source may say. They were written by the author and poet Thomas Miller in Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present (1852). Immediately after those words, Miller went on to quote (in fact, slightly misquote) a couple of lines from Ode to a Nightingale, which I presume is how the error arose. Nor did Keats describe the area as "the last resort for the poor and the ill." (I have no idea where that came from – certainly not the cited source. Perhaps "the poor and the ill" is just a paraphrasing of "want and disease".)

As far as I'm aware, Keats never wrote anything at all about Seven Dials, which descended to its nadir more than two decades after his death. The description has undoubtedly been included in the article because it was believed to have been written by a world-famous poet. Given that almost no one has ever heard of Thomas Miller, is it even worth keeping that quote, while correcting the attribution and the rest of the introductory line? Russ London (talk) 17:09, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Ungrammatical and incorrect?

The lead section contains the following sentence:

'The Seven Dials area retains the original 17th century layout and is the only area of London remaining from the Stuart England.'

While this sentence is certainly ungrammatical, the second part of it is also almost certainly incorrect. In what sense is Seven Dials supposed to be 'the only area of London remaining from [...] Stuart England'?.

Given that the period of post-Great Fire of London rebuilding dates to the Stuart era, and affected most of London at the time, it's unsurprising that there are a number of Stuart era buildings located in central London, and a significant number of Stuart era street plans. However, there are no areas of London today which are distinctively Stuart in terms of their remaining building stock.

So, I think most Londoners would struggle to work out in what sense Seven Dials is significantly more Stuart than any other part of old London. I'd suggest that the quoted sentence above either needs to be clarified or (better still) removed. Axad12 (talk) 12:54, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

You're right about the way that sentence has been worded. As for its veracity, the user [Rajkumar] who added this sentence has not provided an inline citation, which would have been helpful. However, in their edit summary they state that their source was the "official version of narrative from the Seven Dials Trust available at sevendials.com". That website, transcribing one of the Trust's Street History Plaques, does indeed say this:

Today Seven Dials stands as the only quarter of London remaining from late Stuart England — its layout is unaltered and many of the original houses remain, mostly re-faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[1]

You'll note that the source says "late Stuart England" rather than "the Stuart England" but, apart from that, it really does make the bold claim that no other quarter of London remains (whatever exactly "quarter" and "remains" mean) from the period 1660 to 1714.

Personally, I'd welcome your suggested "clarification" of this claim but it's not a task I'd want to take on myself. Russ London (talk) 19:06, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this.

My impression is that the claim in the article (or on the sevendials.com website) remains essentially unreferenced, and is either likely to be incorrect or, at best, is misleading.

Who is to say, for example, that plenty of other areas of London don't have significant numbers of re-faced Stuart buildings? The onus of proving that that were not the case would be almost impossible.

As a compromise I'd suggest re-wording the sentence to say that:

"The Seven Dials area retains its original 17th century street plan, and many of the original Stuart houses remain, mostly re-faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries".

That way we state the established facts, but remove the apparently rather dodgy claim to exceptional status.

At the end of the day the claim (as currently written) that the area is "the only area remaining from [...] Stuart England" is so ambiguous that it is pretty much meaningless, so the suggested text above must represent some form of improvement. Axad12 (talk) 20:42, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Totally agree, especially about the 'onus of disproof'. Your suggested rewording looks perfect to me (except that you could say "18th" and "19th" rather than "eighteenth" and "nineteenth"). 18:32, 15 April 2023 (UTC) Russ London (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Now sorted, as per agreement above. As I was making the change, however, it did occur to me that the statement that the area 'retains its original 17th century street plan' is to some extent rather pointless, given that the same thing can be said for very large swathes of central London. Also, most of the street plan elements of central London which are not 17th century are probably older than that rather than younger. So, in this context, 17th century is actually recent rather than old.

I'm not sure that the claim from the sevendials website should really be on Wikipedia at all. It doesn't seem clear why the website makes the claim, given that it doesn't really set Seven Dials apart from other areas of London. It appears to be essentially just 'puff', as far as I can see, which is exactly the sort of thing which ought to be kept out of Wikipedia.

Ultimately, the website's claim that the area retains its 17th century street plan is being made solely as part of a dubious claim to exceptionalism. By repeating the comment about the street plan we are giving the false impression that it is unusual and worthy of note, when in actual fact it is probably neither of those things. Axad12 (talk) 20:11, 15 April 2023 (UTC)