The world's eyes are LONDON: The world's eyes are focused on a small village called Argleton near Ormskirk, Lancashire, north west England.
Camera crews have been dispatched. "Argleton" is fast becoming a popular hashtag on Twitter. There is even talk of merchandising opportunities.
The reason for all the interest is simple: Argleton doesn't actually exist. It is a phantom village that appears on Google Maps. You can search online for Argleton's local weather forecast, property prices (not much for sale at the moment) or for the number of a local plumber, but in reality the village's coordinates point to little more than a muddy field.
However, just a few hundred metres away stands the very real village of Aughton. So, is this a case of a simple spelling mistake by a cartographer? Or is Argleton evidence of something more conspiratorial afoot in the county?
After all, the local newspaper the Ormskirk and Skelmersdale Advertiser has already posed the question of whether the Argleton mystery might indicate the presence of a "Bermuda triangle of West Lancashire".
The man who originally noticed Argleton on Google Maps holds a somewhat more rational view. Mike Nolan works as head of web services at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk and posted on his blog over a year ago that he'd noticed the anomaly.
"I grew up in the area and spotted on the map one day that it said `Argleton'," he says. "But it's just a farmer's field close to the village hall and playing fields.
I think a footpath goes across the field, but that's all. The name `Argleton' is similar to `Aughton'.
Maybe someone made a mistake when keying in the name?" It's a plausible explanation, and one supported by Professor Danny Dorling, the president of the Society of Cartographers: "I would bet that this is an innocent mistake. In other words, it was not intentionally inserted to catch out anyone infringing the map's copyright, as some are saying."
The world's eyes are LONDON: The world's eyes are focused on a small village called Argleton near Ormskirk, Lancashire, north west England.
Camera crews have been dispatched. "Argleton" is fast becoming a popular hashtag on Twitter. There is even talk of merchandising opportunities.
The reason for all the interest is simple: Argleton doesn't actually exist. It is a phantom village that appears on Google Maps. You can search online for Argleton's local weather forecast, property prices (not much for sale at the moment) or for the number of a local plumber, but in reality the village's coordinates point to little more than a muddy field.
However, just a few hundred metres away stands the very real village of Aughton. So, is this a case of a simple spelling mistake by a cartographer? Or is Argleton evidence of something more conspiratorial afoot in the county?
After all, the local newspaper the Ormskirk and Skelmersdale Advertiser has already posed the question of whether the Argleton mystery might indicate the presence of a "Bermuda triangle of West Lancashire".
The man who originally noticed Argleton on Google Maps holds a somewhat more rational view. Mike Nolan works as head of web services at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk and posted on his blog over a year ago that he'd noticed the anomaly.
"I grew up in the area and spotted on the map one day that it said `Argleton'," he says. "But it's just a farmer's field close to the village hall and playing fields.
I think a footpath goes across the field, but that's all. The name `Argleton' is similar to `Aughton'.
Maybe someone made a mistake when keying in the name?" It's a plausible explanation, and one supported by Professor Danny Dorling, the president of the Society of Cartographers: "I would bet that this is an innocent mistake. In other words, it was not intentionally inserted to catch out anyone infringing the map's copyright, as some are saying."