The incredible fake houses so locals on £9m street don't have to look at London Tube

A row of houses in Londonhides a secret few passersby realise - two aren't real. Leinster Gardens is a street in Bayswater that is lined with tall, ornate, mid-Victorian terraced houses, many of which are listed buildings.

But the street's listed building middle section, where homes have sold for up to £8 million, has two false houses. These are façades built to match their neighbours: porches with large, column-sided black doors, topped by sash windows and balconies, with three more floors above with windows. But the false fronts - numbers 23 and 24 - have no homes behind them. They were built in the 1860s, during construction of the steam engine-driven Metropolitan Railway (now the London Underground), as a space for trains to release steam. The facades, maintained by Transport for London, hide that area of uncovered tracks. Today, the Circle and District lines run on this section. The result is the illusion of an unbroken terraced row of houses between numbers 22 and 25.

For those looking to visit, there isn't much to see - only greyed-out windows, a door with no knobs, and no letterbox. But just 1.5 metres behind is the Underground line.

The façade played a part in the BBC series Sherlock, being used in the episode "His Last Vow" when Sherlock challenges Watson's new wife to look for "the lie of Leinster Gardens".

Fake buildings (also known as fake houses, false-front houses, fake façades, or transformer houses) are government buildings, structures, or public utility housing that uses urban and/or suburban camouflage.

This is done specifically with the intention to disguise equipment and city infrastructure facilities that some may consider aesthetically unpleasing in non-industrial neighborhoods. This method of camouflage was used in other buildings across the capital and the country.

Part of Thurloe Square in Kensington was demolished to make way for the Metropolitan Railway in 1867, leaving behind buildings that look normal from the front, but can be just six feet deep.

Another example is Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Mills Mead, a beautiful Italian Gothic building used by Thames Water as part of its sewage treatment works.