Shopping

Brick Lane Market is growing faster than your waistline after a Bengal curry. Formerly just a trail of bric-a-brac and a smattering of fruit stalls, the now sprawling market has a buzzy new appendage every time you visit, from the fashion fare at the covered Upmarket to quirky T-shirts and jewels at the Back Yard, retro furniture at the Tea Rooms and an eclectic jumble of tat and vintage on the main thoroughfare.

The recent dolling up (and dulling down) of Spitalfields worked in Brick Lane’s favour, causing the more madcap and small-scale stallholders to migrate to the surrounding streets. Now Brick Lane Market is in many ways how East End veterans recall Spitalfields in its heyday: full of surprises, a bit ramshackle, very noisy and packed to the gunnels with strange smells, sights and stalls. Feature continues

Brick Lane’s top stalls
Maria Zureta Bijoux
This fabulous stall is a must-visit for anyone with a penchant for statement chainy jewellery. Designer Roberto Costa fashions together masses of different vintage trinkets – anything from a china clog to a bejewelled trout, and uses them to make gloriously OTT layered pendant necklaces with an antiquey feel.
Upmarket (near back, left-hand side).

The Tea Rooms
This orderly, well-laid-out furniture warehouse and tea room sees the cavernous space beneath 93 Feet East transformed into a haven of reasonably priced antiques, homeware, haberdashery and ceramics. Seek out Goodnight Vienna, a stall selling immaculate Ercol tables and chairs.
Truman Brewery.

Des’s junk shop
One of the few stalls that locals remember from pre-skinny-jeantrified Shoreditch, this is less a shop and more an Aladdin’s cave of oddments. The chap playing raucous piano out front has gone, but the street signs, broken chandeliers, ancient fax machines and cobwebs remain. There’s no sign, but you’ll find the ramshackle and much-graffitied entrance next to Rokit.
Brick Lane.

Pop-up vintage market
This monthly market in yet another disused bit of the Truman Brewery has a variety of well organised stalls peppered with old tan suitcases, glam fur coats and cheap men’s suits which date from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Boiler Room,Truman Brewery, 152 Brick Lane, E1 6QL. Next market Oct 16-Oct 18 2009.

Trader tips
Don’t miss…
While you’re there, have a look at some of the quirky shops neighbouring the market. Rough Trade on Dray Walk is arguably London’s best independent music shop, and recent in-store gigs have included Radiohead.

Things to avoid
Overzealous poppadom pimps poised outside curry houses; bikes sold by iffy-looking youths who hang out on Sclater Street – if it’s brand new, worth £500 and selling for £50, then it was stolen from the pub railings last night…

Refuel at…
Grab a handmade gastro-burger from Moos Boosh on Dray Walk – where stallholders buy their lunch – or if you fancy a drop of London beer in an authentic East End boozer, then nip down to the Pride of Spitalfields (3 Heneage St).

Brick Lane (plus Dray Walk), E1. Upmarket & Backyard market: The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL (7770 6028/www.sundayupmarket.co.uk). Aldgate East tube or Liverpool St tube/rail. 10am-5pm Sun.