Going in Circles (and Loving It): A Defence of Corby's Great Roundabout Habit

More than traffic furniture

Let's start with a confession: I love Corby's roundabouts. Not in a weird way. Not in a way that involves a scrapbook. But in the way you love a slightly annoying uncle: they're part of the family, they've been there for everything, and you'd miss them if they vanished.

Corby grew up fast in the 1950s and 60s, when the new town planners were handed a blank canvas and a load of steelworkers who needed to get from the works to the shops without rear-ending each other. The answer was the roundabout. Lots of them. They were efficient, they were cheap, and they gave the town a distinctive rhythm: approach, give way, go round, indicate, exit, repeat.

An accidental landmark

Some towns have cathedrals. Corby has the Phoenix Parkway interchange. Some towns have a statue of a local hero. Corby has a roundabout with a metal sculpture that everyone calls 'the thing on the roundabout' because nobody's quite sure what it is. That's not a failing; that's character.

Ask anyone who's driven in Corby for more than a fortnight and they'll have an opinion. 'The one by the station is a rite of passage,' says taxi driver Karen. 'You either learn lane discipline or you go round twice and end up back where you started.' Regular driver Deano reckons the worst is 'the one near the retail park, where the lanes change halfway round and the signs are written in a font only satnavs understand.' Newcomer Priya, who moved from Kettering in 2025, says she 'went round the same island three times on my first day and considered phoning my mum.'

And yet. Nobody dies of embarrassment. The roundabouts work. They keep traffic moving, they force you to pay attention, and they give the town a shared language. 'Go straight over the one with the clock' is a sentence you can only say in Corby and have it make sense.

The practical bit

If you're new to the town, here's a gentle guide. Approach slowly. Give way to traffic already on the roundabout — that means from your right. Indicate left when you're about to leave, right if you're going more than halfway round. Stay in your lane. Don't cut across. Watch for HGVs, cyclists and the occasional pedestrian who has misread the gap. And if you miss your exit, don't panic: just go round again. That's the beauty of it. You get a second chance. Sometimes a third.

The grumble is part of the love

Of course there are faults. Some approaches have lane markings so faded they look like a suggestion. Some exits are signed like a riddle. The one by the old steelworks — you know the one — has a reputation that precedes it. But that's the point: these aren't soul-less junctions, they're local quirks. They are places that get referenced in text messages, argued about in pubs and used as shorthand for 'you know, past the big one near the tip'.

They also do something quietly useful: they slow you down. Not just the car. You. For thirty seconds you have to be present. You have to look, think, negotiate. In a world where everything is designed for speed, a roundabout is a small act of civic patience.

So here's to the circle

Corby's roundabouts aren't beautiful, not all of them. They're not famous. They're not going to end up on a postcard. But they're ours. They're the first thing you learn when you pass your test, the last thing you moan about at the pub, and the one thing every Corby driver has in common. Next time you're stuck at the one by the retail park, don't sigh. Look around. You're part of a town tradition. And if you're really lost, just go round again. We won't judge. We've all been there.