The secret fake houses in London

They are hidden in plain sight.

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to another edition of Look Around London.

00:04Leinster Gardens in Bayswater, London looks like a row of elegant Victorian houses, but

00:10there is a secret. Numbers 23 and 24 aren't real homes at all, they're fake facades.

00:17Back in the 1860s, when the world's first underground railway was being built, engineers

00:22used a method called cut and cover, digging trenches for the tunnels and then building

00:27over them. To keep trains ventilated, they needed open spaces along the line and at Leinster

00:33Gardens, two houses had to be demolished. But rather than leave an ugly gap between houses

00:39in a wealthy neighbourhood, the railway company built a false front that matched the rest of

00:44the terrace perfectly. It's just a wall about a metre and a half thick, with painted windows

00:49and a door that leads nowhere. If you walk around the back, you'll find the exposed railway

00:54line.