Tenants queue up to look at 'murder' house

A letting agent’s worst nightmare appears to have come true for Sutton Kersh, in Liverpool.

Instructed by the landlord of a development of 13 properties, the prospective tenants all want to know which one had the body buried under the patio.

Fortunately for the firm, while the murder was notorious and attracted national headlines, it was also fictitious.

In one of the more gruesome storylines in the long-running soap Brookside, Trevor Jordache was buried under the patio by his wife Mandy and daughter Beth (played by Anna Friel).

The show also featured television’s first pre-watershed lesbian kiss, incest, various murders, drug addiction, road crashes, a siege, masses of sex, and six fires and explosions. A religious cult also lived there for a while.

Now the entire cul-de-sac of homes is available at prices ranging from £425 to £750 a month.

Brookside Close was originally bought by Mersey Television in 1982. After the show was axed by C4 in 2003, the houses were bought in 2005 by developers who later went into administration.

But they remained empty, and three years later, amid speculation that the properties would be demolished, they were bought at an Allsops auction for £735,000 – rather less than the £2m hoped for – by a local businessman who had to battle all kinds of legal problems as well as the refurbishment.

Ria Font, of Sutton Kersh Lettings, said: “The interest has been amazing. We’ve been inundated with inquiries.”