Monday, March 17, 2025
Four Sunday morning markets
Columbia Road Market
You can visit Columbia Road anytime but only on Sunday mornings does it become a mainstream magnet for millennials, the middle classes any anyone in need of maidenhair on their mantelpiece. It pays to arrive early because the action starts at eight, or even earlier if you've parked down a sidestreet to unload hundreds of potted plants and/or bunches of cut flowers. The north side of the street becomes lined with stalls, all the better for illumination by any morning sun, and the south side is left clear for circulation, cafe options and boutique browsing.
The stalls are attractively laid out and clearly labelled, safe in the knowledge that aspiration and value are twin bedfellows. Houseplants are more numerous than cut flowers, perhaps because they're easier to lug back next week if unsold or perhaps because it's March. Right now you can expect an abundance of tulips in all shades and colours, all temptingly priced the more bunches you buy, and with more round the back waiting to be whipped out once a gap appears. Now's also a great time to get your bedding plants, with tiny tubs of lupins, saxifrage and double geraniums for £2, all alas labelled as 'Perenials'. It's equally easy to grab a potted orchid, maybe a cheese plant, also a fair amount of lavender for those with tiny backyards or minimal balconies. Some of the smaller vendors plead cash only or cash preferred, while larger outfits are with the programme and list the cards they take, yes even American Express.
It's generally "all you can carry" so punters choose carefully, aware that a handful of daffs and a bag of succulents is going to be easier to get home than a rubber plant or bay tree. That said there's always someone lumbering away with the yucca their other half insisted upon, perhaps even the £350 yucca one stall claimed had a recommended retail price of £1200. It always feels like you're getting a bargain here, especially later in the day as the traders try to unload what they've got left, which may be why the bustle is thicker in the early afternoon than the really quite pleasurable browse I had at ten.
But if it's the flowers that lure people it's the wall of shops across the road that keeps them here. These small independent shops offer coffee and pastries, artisan gifts, amusing objets, antique bits, more coffee but with bagels, kiddy knitwear, quirky pottery, bubble tea and all kinds of other delectable browseables. The doorways with the longest queues are always those offering clutchable refreshment, perhaps a hot chocolate and a breakfast roll, then it's back into the fray to decide which bonsai would look best on your bathroom shelf. Come midweek and pretty much all these shops are closed, unfurling their shutters only for the guaranteed footfall a Sunday brings because, as generations of East End shoppers have discovered, a home really does look nicer with flowers in.
Petticoat Lane Market
This one's much more famous, at least beyond the boundaries of the capital, despite the fact no such street as Petticoat Lane exists. It did once, technically as Peticote Lane, which in the 17th century was part of a commercial district immediately outside the walls of the City. Since 1830 it's been Middlesex Street and every Sunday it's taken over by traders flogging clothes and other wearables, in effect a major overspill of the daily market in neighbouring Wentworth Street. In its day it was rammed, there not being much else doing locally on a Sunday morning and because it was a prime spot for lowly East Enders to find a proper bargain. The bargains are still there but the East Enders less so, the market now a shadow of its former self and attended by a clientele that barely overlaps with the smart souls up at Columbia Road. I blame the lack of adjacent coffee shops (I genuinely do).
Along the street are clothes rails hung with generic shirts and brand-fee blouses, and trestle tables covered with anonymous trainers and no-name dresses. Ladies on a mission can be seen rifling through piles of t-shirts for the right one in the right colour and the right size, or peering at a checked jacket and wondering if the label's genuine M&S. Fitted sheets are stacked in banana boxes, bland tracksuits can be assembled from unmatching halves and the saris under the awning are the brightest purchases of all. Everything comes out of a stuffed cardboard box, itself unpacked from a fleet of white vans, and is priced beneath a stock yellow sign or via something scribbled. Mixed in amongst all this are wheelie suitcases someone's trying to shift and the odd accessory the nearer you get to Bishopsgate, but generally if you can't wear it it isn't here, and if you don't mind what you wear Petticoat Lane's full of bargains. "£2 a polo shirt, have a look!"
Brick Lane Market
This one operates on Saturdays as well as Sundays, closing the upper end of Brick Lane to traffic so stalls can proliferate. But there aren't as many as I remember, and what there are don't exactly set the place alight, the main focus hereabouts having shifted off-road and indoors. I did however spot a stall selling slogan t-shirts, a stall selling mini wicker hampers and a stall selling 'wooden fridge magnets' (including several cringeworthy variations on 'Live Laugh Love'). One dealer had several boxes of vintage vinyl to rifle through, including a tub of jazz, a tub of blues and several tubs of 'as priced', while another trader had all the army surplus gear a provincial teenager or foreign tourist might think was kosher. In the general scheme of things the street market's more an add on than a must-see.
The big food draw at the top of the street is still Beigel Bake, the icon that's been dispensing hoopy carbs 24 hours a day since 1979. The queue remains out the door, and rightly so, especially when plain beigels still sell for as little as 45p and even adding a proper filling doesn't boost the price too much. The less iconic Beigel Shop, established 1855, is still trading from its orange-fronted hutch a couple of doors down. As for the street market its main food stalls can be found on the bridge above the railway lines out of Liverpool Street, a few mini-marquees primed to upsell grilled cheese, saucy ribs and berry crepes to folk who haven't yet stumbled upon anything better. I was pleased to see a Tower Hamlets market officer doing the rounds and chatting with stallholders, this in the spot where 15 years ago some dodgy soul might have been offloading stolen bikes.
For the widest food choice you want the Upmarket, an indoor food court in the corner of the Truman Brewery with all the ambience of a converted car park. Chefs fire up their grills from 10am on Sundays, or unscrew the Nutella, or lay out the giant strawberries they've painstaking piled into plastic beakers. The smells in this edible labyrinth are either spicily delicious or unduly pungent, depending on palate, and if you walk through when it's less busy expect calls from all sides to try a sample. At the very back, surrounded by nobody, I found a man in a beret standing proudly behind a table displaying five small piles of dipping biscuits he'd chalked up as Rain's Madeiran Treats. It turned out this was his first ever time at the market, at that point just half an hour in, and I'm so pleased to see on Instagram that he did finally sell some and will be back again soon because every very small business deserves a chance to succeed.
Borough Market
This isn't Sundays-only, more every-day-except-Monday, but Sunday is the day the world pours into Borough Market to grab comestibles and brunch under the railway viaduct. Nothing here quite feels amateur, nor necessarily cheap, just a deliberate attempt to focus artisan food where every hungry Londoner and tourist can find it. Cheese forms a strong part of the overall offering, with cheddarmongers ready to hand out tiny sample cores in the hope you'll walk off with a wheel. Pies and preserves are readily sourced, plus juices from some far-flung organic orchard, also stacks of flaky pastries nicer than Gail's does. The unit that always makes my eyes roll is The Tinned Fish Market who display their pilchards and mackerel in arty canisters primarily designed to look hip in your larder. Also the beigels here cost three times as much as in Brick Lane, although admittedly they don't have an Arbroath Trout and Tarragon Pate with a hint of English Mustard option.
Keep walking through the bustling market, past clumps of munchers wishing there were more places to sit down, and you might find yourself in the new Borough Yards development. This hospitality sink is what replaced the former Vinopolis attraction and includes all kinds of retail hideaways along faux historical arcades. It feels like not quite enough punters are permeating through, or else are unthrilled by the offerings in Dirty Lane and Soap Yard, and the bloke in the fancy cap shop appeared to have given up waiting for consumer interest, nipped out and locked up. It turns out Borough Market is the only necessary attraction hereabouts, its noodly trays and cooked meats enough to satisfy any Sunday morning appetite or supper shopping list, and back again same time next week?
