Most of the places I've flown light a/c at used square circuits, as we've discussed above. When I joined the UAS, though, we flew tight oval circuits, either at 800' (at military airfields) or at 1000' (at our home airfield, GLA/EGPF).
I once asked the ATC Manager if he liked having us doing oval circuits, three flying clubs on the airfield doing square circuits, lots of turboprop traffic doing bigger square circuits (arriving from all directions), all fitting in with jet traffic.
He replied yes- then explained. GLA was used for training new ATCers, and that sort of workload made excellent training!
Sometimes they would even invite the light traffic (including the Loganair Twotters, which I flew later) to use 28, while keeping the airline traffic on 23. CROSSED circuits must have made ATC's life very interesting!
Sorry, a little off-topic there. What I was meaning to say is that a properly flown oval circuit is no more untidy than a properly flown square one; it just has to be approved by ATC. I think oval circuits date back to Spitfires or earlier- when you can't see the runway over the nose on a straight in approach, you want to delay the moment when you point at the runway as late as possible.