Newly released files reveal a plan to move the Millennium Dome to Swindon| Millennium Dome

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Swindon Dome has a ring to it.

It has emerged that Tony Blair’s government received a proposal to move the Millennium Dome – later redeveloped and renamed the O2 – to Swindon.

The building in south-east London was mired in controversy from its design to its opening on 1 January 2000 and even the days when ministers agonized over what to do next with what critics called a monument to government incompetence.

By early 2001, ministers were keen to offload the £800m building on the Greenwich Peninsula, considered an expensive white elephant. The vaunted Millennium Experience attracted barely half of the expected 12 million visitors.

According to newly released papers from the National Archives, they were made a surprise offer from the Director of the Science Museum, Lindsey Sharp, to move it 80 miles (130 km) west to Wiltshire.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Sharp suggested it could be repurposed to house a new museum on an old military airfield at Wroughton on the outskirts of Swindon. “I am writing to you about a very different and exciting possibility of a dome,” he wrote. “This proposal offers a unique set of features at a time when these properties together may provide a unique solution to the challenges of the dome.”

He suggested that it become home to a “major new public facility dedicated to interactivity and immersively showcasing the latest practicability and research in sustainability” while freeing up the valuable Greenwich site for redevelopment.

Sharp admitted, however, that he did not know whether the plan—which involves moving a building 365 meters (1,200 ft) in diameter and 52 meters (170 ft) high—was actually feasible. “This is a ‘big concept’ approach and will need rapid and detailed evaluation,” he wrote.

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The idea did not capture the imagination of the ministers.

In December 2001 it was announced that Meridian Delta Ltd had been selected to redevelop the site as a sports and leisure centre, and in 2005 it was renamed the O2 Arena.

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