The winged archer above the fountain at Piccadilly Circus is not Eros. Historic England's list entry describes him as "a winged archer in aluminium representing the Angel of Christian Charity but always popularly identified as Eros", and the monument he stands on is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, unveiled on 29 June 1893. It is listed at Grade I, which is rarer for a monument than most visitors would guess.
Almost nobody looks at the part that earned the listing. The tourist photograph is of the figure on top; the thing the sculptor was proudest of is the bronze basin underneath it, crawling with sea creatures. This page is about what the memorial is for, who paid for it, what to look at when you get there, and why it is worth ninety seconds of attention rather than the fifteen it usually gets.
Our guide to Piccadilly Circus itself covers the junction, the screens and the practicalities of a very crowded place. Everything below starts where that page stops.
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain at a glance
- Official name
- Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. The figure is the Angel of Christian Charity
- Unveiled
- 29 June 1893
- Sculptor
- Alfred Gilbert, 1892-93
- Materials
- Bronze fountain; the figure cast in aluminium
- Listing
- Grade I, list entry 1265625, listed 24 February 1958
- Cost and access
- Free, outdoors, visible at any hour. Nearest station Piccadilly Circus
What the memorial is actually for
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, died in 1885, and the fountain was raised by public subscription to remember him. He spent five decades on a narrow set of causes: getting children and women out of coal mines, shortening the working day in textile mills, and reforming the treatment of people confined as lunatics. He chaired the Ragged School Union for nearly forty years, which put free schooling in front of children whose families could pay nothing.
That is why a memorial to him takes the form of a drinking fountain rather than a man on a horse. It was meant to be useful. If you want to see the other end of the work he funded, the Ragged School Museum in Mile End occupies the warehouses that held the largest ragged school in Victorian England, and it is free.
The figure has three names and only one of them is wrong. Gilbert's own subject was Anteros, the brother of Eros who stands for selfless rather than romantic love; the memorial committee and Historic England call the figure the Angel of Christian Charity; and London has called him Eros since the day he went up. All three appear in print. The one to avoid is "the statue of Eros" as though that were its title.
Photo: Julian Herzog (Website) · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Look down, not up: the bronze that earned the Grade I
The statutory description spends one line on the archer and several on the fountain. It is a bronze octagonal basin on a stepped platform, and Historic England calls the sculpture of the fountain itself "of remarkable naturalistic proto-Art Nouveau invention", quoting Pevsner's summary of what is on it: "fishes of all kinds, and every class of molluscous and crustacean life, the crab, the lobster and such like".
Go and find them. They are at and below eye level on the basin and the stem, they are easier to see in flat light than in sun, and they are the reason Gilbert is treated as the most inventive British sculptor of his generation rather than as the man who made a tourist landmark. Nothing about them is roped off. Ninety seconds walking slowly round the base is the whole exercise.
How rare Grade I actually is for a monument
Grade I is not a compliment that gets handed out. Historic England's own open dataset of point-listed buildings holds 379,685 entries for England, of which 9,341 are Grade I: about one in forty. Search that dataset for entries whose names contain the word "statue" or "memorial" and only 39 of them are Grade I.
In London that short list includes the Albert Memorial, the Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace, the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, the Guards Memorial, the equestrian Charles I at the top of Whitehall, the Edith Cavell Memorial off Trafalgar Square and the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. That is the company the thing everyone photographs by accident is keeping.
The commission that went wrong, and where the original is
The job was not Gilbert's to begin with. The V&A's catalogue records that the commission first went to Joseph Edgar Boehm and passed to Gilbert, Boehm's former pupil, when Boehm could not take it on. Gilbert then did what he always did and used several materials at once, including a cast in aluminium at a date when aluminium was a novelty rather than a cheap metal.
The full-size plaster model he worked from survives. It is in the V&A's collection as accession number A.6-1985, made around 1886, and it comes in nineteen parts packed into six crates. It is not on display, which is worth knowing before anyone plans a trip around it: this is a catalogue record, not an exhibit.
The listed room underneath the statue
Almost everyone who photographs the fountain walks straight over a listed interior to reach it. The booking hall of Piccadilly Circus Underground station is separately listed at Grade II, and it is the best free thing within fifty metres of the memorial.
It is Charles Holden's rebuilding of 1925 to 1928, replacing Leslie Green's station of 1906: an elliptical ticket hall below ground, reached by four subway entrances that give seven separate ways in from the pavement. The walls are lined in cream travertine. Two lines of twelve-sided columns, originally maroon scagliola and now painted orange, carry fluted bronze capitals with hanging lanterns built into them. Historic England notes that the bronze metalwork here is among the earliest at any London Underground station.
Two details are worth hunting for on your way through. The original sans-serif lettering survives around the perimeter, labelling areas as PHOTOGRAPHS, PUBLIC TELEPHONES and TICKET MACHINES, none of which contain what they say any more. And set into the central drum in an oak frame is a map of the world's time zones with an illuminated panel reading "The world time today". At street level, the subway entrances themselves are part of the listing: granite kerbs, bronzed railings with fish-scale mouldings and ball finials, and lamp standards carrying the London Transport roundel. Our guide to the Piccadilly line covers the trains that run beneath all this.
Where to stand, and when it is worth photographing
The memorial sits in the south-west corner of the Circus on its own piece of paving, not in the middle of the traffic, so you can get all the way round it on foot without crossing a road. Three practical notes.
- Early morning is the only quiet hour. Before about 09:00 the steps are nearly empty; from mid-morning to midnight they are full of people sitting on them, which is the point of them but not helpful for a photograph of the bronze.
- The archer photographs against the sky, the fountain does not. For the figure, stand south of the monument and shoot up; for the sea creatures, get close and low, and do it on an overcast day.
- Do not climb on it. The steps are for sitting on. The basin is a Grade I listed bronze with a hundred and thirty years of soft metal on it.
Fifteen minutes around the corner
The memorial takes five minutes and there is no queue and no ticket, so build it into a walk rather than a visit. Within five minutes on foot: Regent Street curving north, the Criterion building on the south side of the Circus, the lanes of Soho behind the north side, Leicester Square and Theatreland to the east, and St James's to the south. Our list of free things to do in London has the rest of the outdoor sculpture worth a detour, and London's blue plaques is the other free scheme that rewards looking up.
If you are here for the theatres, our West End theatre guide explains the ticketing and how to get cheap seats, and where to eat before a show covers the streets around here that are better than the ones on the Circus itself.
Frequently asked questions
Is the statue at Piccadilly Circus Eros or not?
Officially not. The monument is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain and Historic England's list entry describes the figure as the Angel of Christian Charity, popularly identified as Eros. Alfred Gilbert's own intended subject was Anteros, Eros's brother, who represents selfless love. The nickname has been in use since 1893 and is not going away.
Who was Lord Shaftesbury?
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, a Victorian reformer who died in 1885. He worked on limiting hours in factories, keeping children and women out of coal mines, reforming the treatment of people confined as insane, and free schooling for the poorest children through the Ragged School Union, which he chaired.
What is the fountain made of, and does it work?
The basin and the rest of the monument are bronze; the winged figure is cast in aluminium, which was an expensive novelty in the 1890s. It was built as a public drinking fountain, and today it functions as a monument rather than as a source of water. Do not drink from it.
How long should I spend at the Shaftesbury Memorial?
Five minutes, or ninety seconds if you only want the photograph. Walk once round the base and look at the fish, crabs and shells on the bronze, which is the part the Grade I listing is really about, then move on. There is nothing to book and nothing to pay.
Can I see the original model of Eros?
Not on display. Gilbert's full-size plaster model of around 1886 is in the V&A's collection as A.6-1985, in nineteen parts, and the museum lists it as not on display. Do not plan a visit around it.
Sources
- Historic England - Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain "Eros", list entry 1265625, Grade I (Internet Archive copy, 5 March 2025) (checked September 2026)
- V&A - Eros, model by Sir Alfred Gilbert, accession A.6-1985 (unveiling date, Boehm commission, parts) (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Piccadilly Circus Underground Station Booking Hall Concourse and Bronzework, list entry 1226877, Grade II (Internet Archive copy, 2 March 2026) (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - National Heritage List for England open data, listed building points (grade counts) (checked September 2026)