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The world's eyes are focused on a small village called Argleton just off the A59 near Ormskirk, Lancashire. 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 (10C yesterday), 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 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 more than 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. But the bottom line is that we don't know what mapping companies do to protect their maps or to hide secret locations, as some are obligated to do." Dorling says that there is still even confusion about what constitutes a place: "Usually, a place is defined as anywhere mentioned three or more times on a 1-25,000 scale map. But if I was inventing a new place name I would have a bit more fun. For example, in Yorkshire there's the area known by locals as Cleckuddersfax, which is a place name made from the nearby names of Cleckheaton, Huddersfield and Halifax."
All Google is saying on the matter is that it does experience "occasional errors" and that the mapping information was provided by a Dutch company called Tele Atlas. And all Tele Atlas's spokesperson will add is that "I really can't explain why these anomalies get into our database."
