Until September 1972, there was only one Magic Roundabout and it was a children's television programme featuring Dougal the dog, a hippy rabbit called Dylan and the spring-loaded Zebedee.
Then a revolutionary idea (in more ways than one) which had been tested in Colchester, Essex, was also tested on Swindon's County Ground Roundabout. Until then the area had been a motorist's nightmare which routinely failed to handle the volume of traffic which converged on it from five directions.
The Magic Roundabout
The new roundabout (see picture) was the work of the Road Research Laboratory (RRL) and their solution was brilliantly simple. All they did was combine two roundabouts in one - the first the conventional, clockwise variety and the second, which revolved inside the first, sending traffic anti-clockwise.
PC Steve Dudley, one of the police officers involved with the introduction of the new system, recalled: "There was someone from the RRL up on a crane and officers on each of the five junctions. We would let the traffic build up and then let one lot go at a time. After a few trial runs we let the whole lot go at once. It was quite nerve-racking, but it did work."
They called it a multi-mini roundabout, but as far as Swindon folk was concerned, they now had their very own Magic Roundabout.
