NEWS FOOTBALL CRIME TV GOSSIP BASE SPECULATION VOUCHER CODES
Do you live in the popular London street named after an unexpected creature where houses built by a murder victim sell for £3m? By Aleecia McVitie, News Reporter
Not many London streets are named after reptiles - we can only think of Snakes Lane and Lizard Street. But nestling in the heart of Balham is a street with a properly surprising reptilian name and that's Terrapin Road. None of the adjacent streets have even vaguely animalistic names, let alone a direct connection to small aquatic turtles, so Terrapin Road really stands out.
At first sight Terrapin Road looks like a perfectly normal terraced street, indeed you could scoot up and down it on Google Streetview and not find anything to say. But look more closely and you'll see the houses are extremely wide with staggeringly decorative front doors inlaid with stained glass in full-on Queen Anne style, often with chequerboard-tiled paths out front. The word 'desirable' doesn't even begin to cut it.
Terrapin Road is part of the Heaver estate laid out by Alfred Heaver in the 1890s. According to Wikipedia he was a shady developer responsible for over 4000 houses across south London, mainly subcontracted out to other builders. But in 1888 he married Fanny Tutt and in 1901 her brother David shot him twice while walking to church near Dorking and that was the end of Alfred Heaver.
The terraced houses in Terrapin Road are so wide that, according to Zoopla, they contain no fewer than seven bedrooms. This helps to explain the £3.1m pricetag on one recent purchase, with several other undivided properties thought to be worth a similar amount. It must look amazing if you're allowed to go there in real life, but one thing's for sure, house prices in Terrapin Road are something snappy!
Do you live in a street named after an unusual animal or have you been shot by your brother? Tell us in the comments.
Revealed - the affordable commuter town less than five minutes from London where the bacon rolls only have one rasher By Verdana Trench, Crime Reporter
Housing may be incredibly expensive but millennials are finding more bang for their buck by living outside the capital in towns previously described on Tripadvisor as 'rank'. Top of the heap in a definitive survey compiled by a Kuwaiti finance company is Dartford in Kent, which is literally one millimetre away from Greater London because the boundary crosses the main street.
"Dartford is home to 4.68 things to do per 10,000 people," according to text literally copied from their press release, "including visiting Saint Edmund's Pleasance Park and watching shows at the Orchard Theatre." The Saturday market also brings the crowds flocking and is the place to come if you want orange rugs, omelettes or diabetic wide-topped socks, otherwise you can always hop on the bus to Bluewater.
According to Rightmove house prices are incredibly affordable. Properties in Dartford sold for an average price of £426,856 over the last year with flats fetching a rock bottom £241,346. But Dartford may not be the place for you if haute cuisine is a dealbreaker. At Esquires Coffee in the High Street, according to Tripadvisor critic Matt361, "one dish had poached eggs that were solid, another had a hash brown that was still frozen."
ChrisDW70 agreed, saying "We ordered a smashed avocado sandwich which arrived with chilli flakes on it. I took it back saying it I can't eat spicy." And JanMc60 won't be back any time soon, saying "coffee is OK but bacon roll had 1 rasher of bacon - at £3 I think this is a rip off." If you can stomach buying your pork-based breakfast snacks from Gregg's, Dartford may still be the affordable town for you.
Have you ever eaten in Dartford? Tell us all about it in the comments so we can harvest your email address.
I visited London's only bright red signpost hiding in plain sight and the free biscuits were amazing By Henrietta Dipole, Entertainment Reporter
You could live in London for years and never spot the signpost at the top of Herne Hill, despite it being bright red, which would be a shame because it's London's only entirely red signpost. Also it's not positioned beside the road, it's set back within the grounds of a church and this conceals it somewhat if approaching from Denmark Hill.
A red painted signpost is known to have existed here in 1768 but may have been even older. It was such an important landmark that in 1834 the name of Ashpole Hill, which also starts here, was changed to Red Post Hill. A few red signposts still exist in the West Country but there are none anywhere else in the southeast. Conveniently all these facts can be freely copied off a plaque erected here by The Dulwich Society - no time-consuming research is required.
The red post has a sign on top saying The Red Post. The place names listed on the sign are CAMBERWELL 1 LONDON 4 to the northeast, DULWICH VILLAGE 1 SYDENHAM 3 to the southeast, HERNE HILL ½ TULSE HILL 1½ to the southwest and BRIXTON 1 to the northwest. It would be even more amazing if it were the original red post but this incarnation only dates back to 2010.
As a bonus, if you visit on Fridays between 10am and 1pm then the doors to Herne Hill United Church are open and you can go inside for a warm space out of the cold, plus free tea, coffee and biscuits. This generous offer is only for the duration of the energy crisis but wow, you turn up for a red post and end up with a free digestive, now that's amazing.
What's your favourite free biscuit? Please get stuck in and kick off the conversation.
Kate Middleton's reaction to a sudden change in how London's bus timetables are printed may surprise you By Lenticula Claude, Transport Reporter
Shocked Londoners have taken to Twitter to express surprise at a change to London's bus timetables none of them had previously noticed. "I literally couldn't speak," said anonymous user @grilledpanda, "they are almost unrecognisable."
The new style bus timetables have a red stripe across the top saying 'London Buses' and copious use of blue ink below where previously there was none. "It looks so different," said south London influencer @thebigfridge, "and I'm unconvinced the colour contrast in the headings is suitable for passengers with a range of visual impairments."
But the biggest change is to the route diagram which now only shows the route ahead rather than the entire route as was the case before. "This will inconvenience me every time I want to know where a bus has come from," said mum-to-be @lickmytoblerone, "which really matters if I'm accidentally standing on the wrong side of the road."
The transformation is believed to have come into effect in June 2022 which just goes to show how unobservant everyone is. Kate Middleton has so far maintained a discreet silence regarding the change.
Want more from MyGeezer? Sign up to our daily newsletters here for all the latest and greatest inbox spam from across London.
