Top town – in a roundabout sort of way

Once upon a time Ashford was known as a railway town, due to the vast expanse of the Newtown Klondyke rail works and the high quality of steam engines and other rolling stock it produced.

Perhaps Ashford should now be known as the roundabout town, because not only do we have a lot of roundabouts but many of them have quirky sculptures or additions on them.

And an unusual addition was featured in last week’s paper when a swimmer being pursued by two sharks suddenly appeared on the Eureka Park roundabout in Kennington. As yet no one knows who put it there and why.

But it’s a welcome addition to our stock of decorated roundabouts.

We also have the drover and his cows on the roundabout in Simone Weil Avenue, which are usually decorated for Christmas. Then just down the road in Templer Way, outside the Army Reserve Centre, is the Tank roundabout, slightly misleadingly named because the adornment on it is actually an armoured vehicle, not a tank. And in the other direction there’s a couple of metal meerkats living on the Orchard Heights roundabout.

Even the mini-roundabout at the junction of West Street and Godinton Road has the Bolt sculpture. One Christmas the Bolt was decorated as a giant Christmas pudding.

And the Mace Lane roundabout was recently given a revamp, with huge stones put on it, which some likened to Stonehenge.

Roundabouts have been around since 1903 when William Phelps Eno first devised the idea of a one-way rotary system for Columbus Circle, New York City, USA.

This was closely followed by Eugene Hernard, chief architect of Paris, France in 1907. So maybe it’s not surprising that France has half of the world’s roundabouts (more than 30,000 in 2010).

And if you ever want to know more about roundabouts then why not join the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (more details at www. roundaboutsofbritain.com).

Picture: Andy Clark