Argleton was a
phantom settlement
Phantom settlements, or paper towns, are settlements that appear on maps but do not actually exist. They are either accidents or copyright traps. Notable examples include Argleton, Lancashire, UK and Beatosu and Goblu, US.
Agloe, New York, ...
that appeared on
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...
and
Google Earth but was later removed by Google.
The supposed location of Argleton was between the
A59 road
The A59 is a major road in England which is around long and runs from Wallasey, Merseyside to York, North Yorkshire. The alignment formed part of the Trunk Roads Act 1936, being then designated as the A59. It is a key route connecting Merseys ...
and
Town Green railway station within the
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...
of
Aughton Aughton may refer to several places in England:
* Aughton, East Riding of Yorkshire
* Aughton, Lancashire, a parish in the borough of West Lancashire
* Aughton, Lancaster, a hamlet in the civil parish of Halton-with-Aughton, Lancashire
* Aughton, ...
in
West Lancashire
West Lancashire is a local government district with borough status in Lancashire, England. The council is based in Ormskirk, and the largest town in the borough is Skelmersdale. At the 2011 Census, the population of the borough was 110, ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
, in an area of empty fields.
[Lefort, Rebecca (31 October 2009).]
Mystery of Argleton, the 'Google' town that only exists online
". ''Telegraph.co.uk''. Retrieved on 6 November 2009.[Hickman, Leo (3 November 2009).]
Welcome to Argleton, the town that doesn't exist
". ''Guardian.co.uk''. Retrieved on 6 November 2009. Data from
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
is used by other online information services, which consequently treated Argleton as a real settlement within the
L39 postcode area. As a result, Argleton also appeared in numerous listings for things such as estate and letting agents, employment agencies and weather, but although the people, businesses and services listed are all in fact real, they are elsewhere in the same postcode district.
[Ramachandran, Arjun (4 November 2009).]
Argleton: the phantom town that Google created
". ''The Sydney Morning Herald''. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
Media interest
The anomaly was first written about by Mike Nolan, head of web services at nearby
Edge Hill University
Edge Hill University is a campus-based public university in Ormskirk, Lancashire, England, which opened in 1885 as Edge Hill College, the first non-denominational teacher training college for women in England, before admitting its first male stu ...
, who posted about it on his blog in September 2008.
In early 2009 it was investigated further by Nolan's colleague, Roy Bayfield, who walked to the area shown on Google Maps to see if there was anything special about it. Bayfield commented about it on his own blog and described the place as being "deceptively normal" as well as exploring the concept of a non-existent place using the tropes of
magic realism and
psychogeography
Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutio ...
; the story was later picked up by the local media. By November 2009, news of the non-existent town had received global media attention, and "Argleton" became a
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
.
[Jaleel, Gemma (5 November 2009).]
Advertiser leads way over mystery Google Map town Argleton
". ''Ormskirk & Skelmersdale Advertiser''. Retrieved on 7 November 2009. As of 23 December 2009, a Google search for "Argleton" was generating around 249,000 hits, and the
domain names
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
argleton.com (with the message, "What the hell are they talking about? We, the good citizens of Argleton do exist. Here we are now!") and argleton-village.co.uk (a spoof website describing the history of Argleton, famous "Argletonians" and current events in the fictional village) were claimed. Other websites were selling merchandise with slogans such as "I visited Argleton and all I got was this T-shirt" and "New York, London, Paris, Argleton".
On 18 September 2010, the BBC Radio 4 programme ''
Punt PI'' hosted by
Steve Punt investigated the case of Argleton.
Explanations
One possible explanation for the presence of Argleton is that it was added deliberately as a
copyright trap, or "
paper town" as they are sometimes known, to catch any violations of copyright, though such bogus entries are typically much less obvious. It has been noted that "Argle" seems to echo the word "Google", while the name is also an
anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
of "Not Large" and "Not Real G", with the letter G perhaps representing Google.
". ''BBC Liverpool'' (3 November 2009). Retrieved on 7 November 2009. Alternatively, it has been suggested that "Argleton" is merely a misspelling of "Aughton", although both names appear on the map.metasyntactic variable
A metasyntactic variable is a specific word or set of words identified as a placeholder in computer science and specifically computer programming. These words are commonly found in source code and are intended to be modified or substituted before ...
, the kind of placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are tip of the tongue, temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in ...
s used by computer programmers. " Argle-bargle" is slang for "an argument" or "to argue." Professor Danny Dorling
Danny Dorling (born 16 January 1968) is a British social geographer. Since 2013, he has been Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford.
He is also a visiting professo ...
, president of the Society of Cartographers, considered it more likely that Argleton was nothing more than an "innocent mistake".Tele Atlas
Tele Atlas is a Netherlands-based company founded in 1984 which delivers digital maps and other dynamic content for navigation and location-based services, including personal and in-car navigation systems, and provides data used in a wide range ...
; the latter was unable to explain how such anomalies could get into their database, but said that Argleton would be removed from the map.
See also
* Beatosu and Goblu, Ohio
* Phantom island
A phantom island is a purported island which was included on maps for a period of time, but was later found not to exist. They usually originate from the reports of early sailors exploring new regions, and are commonly the result of navigati ...
* Agloe, New York
References
External links
Argleton: the world
''The Guardian'' 30 November 2009 unmapped
Punt PI
(Radio 4 programme on Argleton)
{{Authority control
Fictional populated places in England
Google Maps
Fictitious entries
Aughton, West Lancashire