Nobody likes traffic, but imagine if your home was next to one of the buesiest roundabouts in the country, with lots of traffic going past 20 hours a day. That's what it's like living next to Sun in the Sands Roundabout in London.
"It's noisy," reports the first resident we speak to. The second resident explains it's not just noisy, it's actually "really noisy." A third, comically having to raise his voice above the screeching traffic, concurs: "It's definitely noisy."
It's hard to imagine why any of the residents choose to live right on the edge of a roundabout where two of London's busiest roads meet. But once you get over the din rising from the meeting point of the A102 (towards the Blackwall Tunnel), and the A2 (towards Blackheath and Brixton), there are some huge perks to living there, according to residents.
Barry, 73, told MyLondon he has lived in a block of flats right by the roundabout for many years, where the noise is constant, and, "the break in traffic from two in the morning until six in the morning is the only respite you've got." Barry said all through the night, "you hear the cars braking as they come up to the roundabout."
The pensioner said the council fitted new windows in his flats years ago to try to help with the noise, but it was still so bad that he ended up having to shift his rooms around. "I’ve moved my bedroom out to the back to escape," he explained, "otherwise I’d get hardly any sleep at all."
Despite all this, Barry said the upsides of the area hugely outweigh the downsides for him. "It’s handy for shops, you get buses going every which way direction, [to] doctors and hospitals which is handy for me, as I can't drive anymore," said Barry, who also had friends and family in the area. "So overall, apart from the roundabout, it’s not a bad place to live."
Henry Hoppe, 21, who moved next to the roundabout in September, said it was a culture shock for him at first. "I grew up in the countryside near Wales and it was silent," he said. "All I heard was sheep, and now I come here and it’s just motorway." But Henry said it only took him "the first few weeks" to get used to the noise, and now he loves how well-connected the area is.
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A few doors down, a 32-year-old landlord has made some pricey changes to his Georgian property to block out the noise. Luke, who declined to give his surname, told MyLondon: "I’ve got special windows to try to block the noise out and it works really well." Luke said he paid an eye-watering £3,000 per unit for the windows, which come with a special noise-blocking film on them.
Although he's made a haven of the inside of his house, Luke is painfully aware of the demon on the doorstep. "It’s the noisiest road and it’s the most polluted road," he said, "all our windows are continuously black." The landlord went on: "I think people dislike this road, there’s always accidents on that junction. People drive down here so fast. This place has been crashed into a few times."
But Luke said the road would never push him out of the area - in fact, he is only just moving back because he loves it so much. "Blackheath village is really nice, the park is really good, the links here are really good to North Greenwich," said Luke, who added the area is incredibly well connected. "In the car I can get straight up the A2 get to Bluewater in 15 minutes, and get to Brighton in an hour."
Luke's neighbour Frances, 72, who declined to give her surname, takes a more stoic approach to the noise. "You get use to it," said the pensioner, grinning bracingly. Although, she did admit there are downsides to the "pollution and the amount of cars," and added, "if you came out in the morning you’ll be queuing for half an hour."
"It’s always busy and if there’s an accident in the [Blackwall] tunnel you can be in traffic for five or six hours, gridlocked," said Frances. She said the Covid lockdown brought a novel respite for the residents, as the traffic dropped off completely, reminiscing: "We had lovely streets." But Frances is adamant she wouldn't move. "I’ve got a perfect little house with the car parked right outside," she laughed.
