Where were you looking at, Milton Keynes? Peterborough? I'm struggling to think of anywhere gridlike in the UK, though I'm sure some of the '60s towns have them.
Glasgow is gridlike; I was there for the Games and it felt like a very un-British street layout. But I don't think anywhere in the UK has grid numbering ("42nd street" etc). We don't do the continental thing of naming streets after significant dates either.
The UK certainly has plenty of surprising road layout, often involving roundabouts, oneway systems, medieval street plans, and roadworks.
I was gonna say that Glasgow city centre is pretty atypical - resembling US cities close enough that a few parts of World War Z (which were meant to be Philadelphia I think) were filmed there. But then I realised that Edinburgh's "New Town" (actually hundreds of years old) is a grid-layout too.
New Town in Edinburgh and the modern city centre of Glasgow both date back to the mid-18th century. They're very unusual for the time insofar as they had a large plan for a large area.
Around Liverpool and Birkenhead were the only places I looked, they're not perfect grids of course, I don't know hardly anything about European street layouts though, that might be considered very gridlike compared to other places in the area.
Salisbury had a grid pattern back in the 13th century. But mostly small roads follow old field boundaries that can be very old and bendy. Even new developments will fit into old field layouts and have curved roads.
>* But mostly small roads follow old field boundaries that can be very old and bendy.* //
The places I know of - Lincolnshire and East Lothian - where roads follow field boundaries have a lot of straight roads with 90deg bends. Interesting you suggest that field boundary following would make roads more "bendy" (suggesting non-straight edges and non right-angles).
Perhaps the fields of Salisbury weren't dissected for inheritance purposes or are older and follow more natural lines?
It depends how old the field is. Around villages you can see very irregular fields that are very old. But a lot of the larger fields have straighter boundaries as a result of intentional enclosure. In lowlying parts a lot of the land is drained, and smaller drainage channels will follow straight lines.
