UK’s First Roundabout, Letchworth, Herts, UK
Posted by: 
bill&ben
N 51° 58.266 W 000° 13.969
30U E 690073 N 5761440
The UK’s first roundabout was created in 1909 at the junction of Broadway, Sollershott West, Sollershott East and Spring Road in Letchworth.
Waymark Code: WM82R4
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/17/2010
Views: 9
Roundabout-style junctions were first used in France in the 1870s, but the first recognisable modern roundabout was New York's Columbus Circle, opened in 1905.
The first roundabout in the UK appeared in the Garden City of Letchworth five years later. To commemorate this landmark, signage has been erected on the roundabout at the junction of Broadway, Sollershott West, Sollershott East and Spring Road.
Unlike New York, London and Paris, Letchworth had no traffic problems and its roundabout did not connect major roads. The town is, even today, not a very built up place, with big houses well hidden down leafy avenues. But the Garden City movement that created it, led by the town's founder Ebenezer Howard was given to forward-thinking ideas in town planning and when it came to a point where six roads intersected they tried something new.
The six approaching roads were not to meet directly, and would instead all terminate at a circular roadway about 108 ft (33 m) in diameter. There was no centrepiece beyond a grassy circular island, so this was not a case of locating a civic ornament. It was traffic engineering, plain and simple, with the intention that a pedestrian could cross from any side of any street, to any other side of any other street, without having to cross the road more than twice.
With no one-way rule and no traffic priority it wasn't exactly a roundabout as we now know them - but this was 1909, when the UK had a national speed limit of 20mph and Henry Ford had only been in business for six years. Given the enormous changes the road system has seen in the intervening time, it's incredible that Sollershott Circus was recognisably a modern roundabout from the outset: a junction with a circular roadway, designed specifically to control the flow of traffic and improve road safety. A hundred years later, it is still doing its job.
Traffic circles were considered a disastrous failure in the US, but roundabouts continued to be popular in Europe, especially Britain.
FIRST - Classification Variable: Place or Location
Date of FIRST: 01/01/1909
More Information - Web URL: Not listed
|
Visit Instructions:As a suggestion for your visit log, please make every effort to supply a brief-to-detailed note about your experience at the Waymark. If possible also include an image that was taken when you visited the Waymark. Images can be of yourself, a personal Waymarking signature item or just one of general interest that would be of value to others. Sharing your experience helps promote Waymarking and provides a dynamic history of your adventures.