Inside failed £530m town built to look exactly like a ‘postcard perfect’ English village – but is 5,700 miles from UK

SOME 5,700 miles from Britain lies a replica of an old English town completed with cobbled streets, red phone boxes and small coffee shops.

Thames Town, as it’s known, has everything you would expect in a quaint English town, including a church, pub, and .

Thames Town in Songjiang district is just 19 miles away from central Shanghai.

It seems to be a replica of .

Built at a cost of £530million, the place was first expected to be inhabited by Brit-loving locals and visited by tourists to look as if they have flown to the UK.

The town occupies an area of less than a square mile and is designed for a population of 10,000.

Most of its and design language has been directly copied from buildings found in .

This includes a church, which seems like it is based on the Christ Church in Clifton Down in .

There are also English-style pubs, a fish and chip shop and even red telephone booths.

However, after some 25 years since first unveiled, the town has failed to do its magic and attract people – and has been .

Many people blame soaring , while others say the project was flawed.

Today, Thames Town is a popular destination for newly married couples who like it as the backdrop for their wedding snaps.

Brit Photographer Paul Reiffer, 39, who visited the bizarre town, said despite the village’s authentic look there is a catch.

“The place is really interesting and very well made, except none of it is actually working,”;; he said.

“The pubs don’t open, and the church does not have a Sunday service.

“We went to a pub in the town to get some lunch and quickly realised there was nobody working there, and the buildings were just props, then we noticed that all of the working shops were for weddings.”

Paul said Thames Town, which was built in the early 2000s, looks identical to Weymouth, Dorset, where he lives in England.

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“If you were blindfolded and dropped here, you would have no idea you were in Shanghai,”;; he said.

“The place is exactly like an English town – it’s designed very well – but it puts you in a weird headspace.”;;

“The weird part is that when you go there people all around are having photoshoots and everyone is dressed up for a wedding.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese city of Suzhou has areplica of Tower Bridge, though it has four turrets rather than the original one’s two and also has a four-lane dual carriageway running across it.

you can see replicas of Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, Austrian villages and the Titanic.