![\"London](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_GettyImages-1164568175.jpg\")
One street of terraced houses in London is not like many others due to a hidden twist (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\nThere’s a litany of charming and characterful streets across the country but one street in London comes with two houses that offer an unexpected twist that, once you spot it, can’t be missedOne street of terraced houses in London is not like many others due to a hidden twist (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
A street in London looks like any other typical, quintessentially British street made up of rows of characterful Victorian terraces but there\u2019s an unexpected surprise waiting behind two of the properties. Leinster Gardens, in the Bayswater area of Westminster, appears to be a regular, run-of-the-mill residential neighbourhood but two houses on the street are false facades<\/a>.<\/p>\n Numbers 23 and 24 look as though they have standard sash windows but in fact, they don\u2019t – they\u2019re blocked up. The pretty frontages were built to tie in with the rest of the houses while concealing a ventilation shaft for the London Underground<\/a>.<\/p>\n The faux houses were built in the 1860s while the Underground was being constructed, in a bid to address concerns regarding ventilation. They were designed with meticulous attention to detail, allowing them to seamlessly blend in with the neighbouring properties<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s only when heading around the back of the houses that the full scale of the facades becomes apparent.<\/p>\n Maskells Estate Agents explains: \u201cThe houses at 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens were demolished to build a tunnel connecting Paddington station with Bayswater. The Underground uses this open-topped portion of the line to ventilate a large section of the surrounding Tube system, but the sacrificed homes were never reconstructed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis left a rather unsightly hole in an otherwise very sightly block of Empire 5-Story houses. And so, a false fa\u00e7ade was constructed to conceal the wound. It matches its neighbours in every important detail, except that the windows are painted on, rather than being made of glass.”<\/p>\n Recently, a detailed video showing both the beautiful frontage of the fake homes\u2019 five-feet thick walls and what they look like from the back was shared on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the caption, the creator penned: \u201cThere is something not quite right about this West London street…<\/p>\n \u201c23-24 Leinster Gardens have [no] letterboxes and the windows are all blocked up. To find out why you have to go around the back onto Porchester Terrace.<\/p>\n \u201cYou will see that they are, in fact, just facades and hiding a section of underground railway!\u201d<\/p>\n In the comments section, people were keen to share their thoughts.<\/p>\n One person made a nod to Harry Potter<\/a> character Sirius Black\u2019s London home, which is famously concealed from humans – known in the magical world<\/a> as \u201cmuggles\u201d.<\/p>\n They said: \u201cSilly muggles, it\u2019s Grimmauld Place.”<\/p>\n Someone else said: \u201cInteresting to know… then best to avoid buying #22 & #25, for you’d be literally living besides the train tracks, and train noise.\u201d<\/p>\n A third person said: \u201cFirst learned about these house facades in Sherlock. V interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Another person said: \u201cSo interesting I would never [have] guessed. I thought Sirius Black lived there.”<\/p>\n Someone else asked: \u201cAm I the only one who thought this was going to be something about Sirius Black’s house?\u201d<\/p>\n While another person shared: \u201cI went there once, to look for the place. It took me a while to realise I had already walked past it! I think it’s a great idea to hide the ugly scenery.\u201d<\/p>\n And another quipped: \u201cImagine the surprise a burglar would get.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s a litany of charming and characterful streets across the country but one street in London comes with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,16551,393,600,4884,8082,257,594,10003,16,15,416],"class_list":{"0":"post-351841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-burglary","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-facebook","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-harry-potter","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-london-underground","16":"tag-property-news","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-viral"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115044625126377693","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"UNITED](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_GettyImages-90772556.jpg\")
One of Henry Flather’s photographs showing the construction, undertaken between 1866 and 1870, of the Metropolitan District Railway’s (MDR) underground lines between Paddington and Blackfriars via Kensington before the facades were built(Image: SSPL\/Science Museum\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n