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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Finn Byrne

London's fake houses which are only 1.5m deep and look normal but hide a secret

Two deceptive houses which look like they would break the bank are actually mini-facades hiding a bit of London's history.

At first glance the pair of homes, in Leinster Gardens near Hyde Park, look like all the others on the leafy, wide street.

One would be forgiven for assuming that they are cavernous and well decorated, given their position on a street where the average price of a home will set you back a cool £1.5million, My London reports.

Rather than being owned by the usual Russian oligarch or British aristocrat via a complicated off-shore arrangement, the houses are managed by Transport for London.

And they are used to hide a piece of the capital’s history.

The properties look like any other from the front (WikiImages)

Nestled behind just six inches of wall at the front is an empty cavity.

Directly below it is a vent running downwards to an old Metropolitan Line railway which was built in 1860.

Before the electrification of the Underground, steam trains ferried people beneath the Capital city.

In order to ensure that commuter's glasses didn't become too fogged up, or the air quality poor to the point of being unbreathable, an escape route for the steam was built.

Drivers of the trains would release built up smoke and condensation in open-air sections of track.

They hide a vent which runs down to an old Metropolitan Line (Flickr)

One of these open-air sections is behind numbers 23 and 24 of Leinster Gardens.

To hide the piece of track the houses were built to mask the old Metropolitan Line railway.

The fake homes are built to match their neighbours and have identical features, including Corinthian columns and fake windows and doors.

The houses are Grade II listed by the government.

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