From red telephone boxes to Tudor cobbled streets and traditional country pubs to Gothic churches, it looks at first glance like any other quaint English village.

But there’s one very unusual quirk that makes Thames Town unique… it’s located more than 5,000 miles away from the UK in China.

The town, situated in the Shanghai suburb of Songjiang, was completed in 2006 with the intention of attracting residents who liked the architecture and style of the UK.

Two decades on however, the £530million project has become a ghost town with critics citing high house prices – and most of its stores and restaurants are empty.

Although properties initially sold rapidly for up to £410,000, most purchases were by the relatively wealthy as investments or second homes – and prices rose sharply.

Thames Town is nevertheless still popular with couples who flock there for wedding photoshoots to make it look as though they tied the knot in Britain.

Located 19 miles away from central Shanghai, it features English-style corner shops and even replica branches of Costa Coffee – but few community facilities.

The pedestrianised streets are lined with yew and plane trees and oak panelling fronts the mock-Tudor, English-style boutiques – along with a fish and chip shop.

Thames Town is situated in the Shanghai suburb of Songjiang and was finished in 2006

The £530million project has become a ghost town with critics citing high house prices

People pose inside a red telephone box located next to the church in Thames Town

The sandstone church was modelled on a chapel in Bristol but does not have Sunday services

The sandstone church was modelled on a chapel in Bristol, the houses were built in Georgian and Victorian-style and there is even a mock castle and garden maze.

British photographer Paul Reiffer, 39, who visited the town, said: ‘The place is exactly like an English town – it’s designed very well – but it puts you in a weird headspace.

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‘To a certain extent its quite mad. When I look at the pictures it looks identical to where I live in England in Weymouth. The weird part is that when you go there people all around are having photoshoots and everyone is dressed up for a wedding.’

He went to a pub in the town for some lunch but ‘quickly realised there was nobody working there and the buildings were just props’.

Mr Reiffer added that he then noticed all of the working shops were for weddings.

He continued: ‘When the town opened, Asian couples started coming here to get pre-wedding photographs which made it look like they had gone to England to get married.

‘As soon as residents here realised that they could make money from this, all other retailers vanished and now the town has become a hotspot for wedding photography.

‘There can be up to 30 photoshoots happening at a time. Now the place is a ghost town, there isn’t a community living here other than the shop owners and people coming for photographs.’

Mr Reiffer said that he expected the area becomes ‘dead’ once the photographers have finished their work for the day, in an area that was initially designed for a population of 10,000.

Thames Town is still popular with couples who flock there for wedding photoshoots

It was built with intention of attracting residents who liked the style of a British market town

Most purchases of properties were by the relatively wealthy as investments or second homes

He continued: ‘It’s quite sad really, the place was made to become a thriving town where people were going to live and now it’s like a movie set.

‘Being in Asia and walking around here is like watching The Truman Show, the same thing happens here every day from morning to night over and over again.

‘It makes you wonder how amazing the place could have been if it had worked out with the original plan.

‘The place is really interesting and very well made, except none of it is actually working. The pubs don’t open, and the church does not have a Sunday service.’

‘If you were blindfolded and dropped here, you would have no idea you were in Shanghai. The difference is that all you would see when visiting is photo shoots, all happening at the same time.’ 

After Thames Town was first built, ambitious future plans included building nine universities, several hi-tech plants and one of the world’s biggest shopping centres.

Newlyweds walk past a statue of Winston Churchill during their photographs in Thames Town

Thames Town is more than 5,000 miles away from the UK in the Shanghai suburb of Songjiang

Pubs and fish and chip shops are among the English-style buildings in Thames Town

A man pushes a pram past a statue of James Bond in Thames Town, the replica English town

Most of the stores and restaurants in Thames Town are empty and it is seen as a ghost town

There were also hopes that major UK supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s and even retailers including Next would look at opening stores there for an even more authentic feel.

Homes were initially offered with prices from £330,000 to £410,000 for a three-bedroom villa, which is more expensive than the average in Shanghai. It was £45,000 for a one-bedroom apartment.

Thames Town was planned by UK architect Tony Mackay who was hired in 2001, but he told BBC News in 2013 that he was not happy with his work, saying: ‘It doesn’t look quite right.’

His intention had been to model the location on a Cotswold village, but he felt it looked more like a film set because of the six-storey Tudor buildings and the wrong stones and window proportions in the church.

At the time of its launch in 2006, architecture critic Jonathan Watts said in The Guardian: ‘Look at those white stucco Regency terraces. This must be Pimlico. Look again.

‘Well, perhaps we are in Bristol; that’s the spire of St Mary Redcliffe over there, isn’t it? On the other hand, all those black-and-white Tudor shops seem to spell Chester. Right?

Many of the houses in Thames Town were built in Georgian and Victorian-style

The church in Thames Town is replica of Christ Church in Clifton Down, Bristol 

An ‘Oxford Street’ road sign in Thames Town, which is located 20 miles outside Shanghai

Couples flock there for wedding photoshoots to make it look as if they tied the knot in Britain

The streets of Thames Town were lined with yew and plane trees and red telephone boxes

‘Wrong. This is not England, nor even a chim-chiminee Hollywood film set. Welcome to Thames Town, a grotesque, and extremely funny parody of an olde English town seen through Chinese eyes, and built by canny British developers.’

But James Ho, the head of one of the companies behind the development, Shanghai Hengde Real Estate, said after it was built: ‘I wanted the properties to look exactly the same as those in the United Kingdom.

‘I think English properties are very special. When we decide to learn from others, we should not make any improvements or changes.’

The town was constructed as part of a programme called ‘One City, Nine Towns’ which saw locations built on Shanghai’s outskirts in different international styles.

This was due to projections at the time that 400million people would move from the rural areas of China to the cities in the following 15 years, forcing the government to embark on a multibillion-pound programme of mass building to create 3,000 new towns and cities.

Other areas of China have been given their own versions of UK landmarks such as Stonehenge and Tower Bridge – as well as the Sphinx of Cairo, the Colosseum of Rome and the Eiffel Tower of Paris.