This Month’s Magazine
Street features
Every Covent Garden Street has its own history, some more desirable than others.
Please select street below and meet some of Covent Garden’s characters over the years.
- Please choose a street from the below -
Piccadilly Archer
In the heart of the commercial cut and thrust and multicultural crowding of Piccadilly Circus, there stands one of London’s many iconic statues. Atop a bronze fountain encrusted with fantastic marine life and crustacea, there is a noble boy archer, aiming to shoot his arrow amongst a swarm of unsuspecting bystanders. Legend tells us that if Eros, the ancient Greek god of love, shot his golden arrow into a maiden’s heart she would be spellbound with ardent passion for the next young man she set eyes on; Eros also had another arrow in his quiver, a blunt, leaden arrow fletched with owl feathers which would inflict emotional apathy on the wounded. But why is there a statue of Eros in central London?
Well; actually, there isn’t.
In fact, the figure is not Eros but the Angel of Christian Charity: They just happen to look alike. The statue was erected in memory of the philanthropist 7th Earl Shaftesbury and the Angel of Christian Charity was thought to be fittingly symbolic of how the Earl conducted his life; championing the little people in the Houses of Parliament. That the statue is now universally known as Eros does a disservice to Earl Shaftesbury, but in his nature of altruistic integrity he may be looking down on Piccadilly Circus cheered that his memorial brings grace and happiness to so many from so many countries. Over the years the memorial has moved around with visits to Egham and Embankment Gardens in times of war, but Piccadilly Circus is where the Angel/Eros has spent most of its time.
When it was commissioned in the 1880s the brief was handed to the brasssmith Sir Alfred Gilbert who opted to cast the statue in aluminium. This was the first statue in London to be cast in this metal, which has led to its own problems; in 1994 a burly drunken reveller climbed onto the statue and challenged ‘Eros’ to a wrestle resulting in damage to the soft aluminium. After this episode the statue is now boarded up for protection at times of national celebration. Let the booze-boys try and fight Trafalgar Square’s lions instead.
Habitual visitors until the outbreak of WWII were the cockney ‘flower girls’ who’d offer the gentlemen of London something rather more than a nosegay. However since the war Piccadilly Circus has become one of London’s most famous meeting points, from here all the many treasures of Covent Garden and the West End are but a short walk away, or hop on a bus, most of those in London come by here.
Millions of photo albums around the world have family members around the fountain and a hand from every country has tossed a coin into the fountain; so even in death Earl Shaftesbury is taking the hopes and prayers of normal folk under his wing.
