Saturday markets in London

Good for: fruit and veg, lunch
This small, buzzy street market, in a sometimes sleazy area, is one of London’s oldest. These days its home to several good street food stalls so makes a great lunch venue on a sunny day.

Good for: food, lunch
London’s oldest market – dating back to the 13th century – is also the busiest, and most popular for gourmet goodies. Here, traders satisfy the city’s insatiable appetite for beautifully displayed organic fruit and veg, cakes, bread, olive oil, fish, meat and booze.

Good for: food, cafés
Compared to the culinary homogeneity of Borough market et al, Brixton is a sensory fiesta. The air is thick with the sizzle of jerk chicken stalls, tinny reggae riddims and yam-based price disputes while the multi-coloured hues of exotic fish displays glimmer like a whiffy rainbow.

Good for: food
If it’s Saturday, then it must be Hackney’s Broadway Market, at least as far as east London’s fashionably attired food-lovers are concerned. Many of the congregate on the market, picking up well-priced fresh fruit and veg, artisan cheeses, rare-breed meat, luscious cakes and indulging in top-notch snacking options from an array of hot food stalls.

Good for: food, clothing
Held in the attractive cobbled yard of St Marylebone parish church, this market was started by food-loving fashionista Angela Cash. The Saturday crowd is drawn to a host of fashion retailers as well as mouthwatering grub.

Good for: clothes, accessories, souvenirs
Camden’s sprawling collection of markets offers a real smörgåsbord of street culture. Wander past loitering goths and punks to join the throng of tourists, locals and random celebs fighting it out at the vast and varied selection of shops and stalls. Saturdays are not for the faint-hearted – crowds craving lava lamps, skull rings, fashion, interiors, music and vintage swarm about.

Good for: antiques, gifts
Although something of a London institution, Covent Garden Market is too commercial and generally too crowded to provide a particularly characterful retail experience. However, the colonnaded 19th-century building is impressive, and occasionally some of the performers and entertainers can even be worth watching.

Good for: fruit and veg
If the bellowing, clattering traders selling a good mix of fruit, veg and tat aren’t Albert Square enough for you, then the frequent presence of a real life ‘EastEnders’ actor on the street might be – it’s not unusual to see locals Martin Fowler or Cindy Beale here picking their way through the apples and pears (“TWO PAND A PAAAAND”). Chapel Market has no airs and graces despite the Islington area that surrounds it having shot up in desirability over the past decade.

Good for: food, vintage
Most of Deptford Market is your standard south/east London fare: three-pack pants, timber wolf fleeces, Duracells and lighters. Halfway down its length, though, is a distended gut of impacted crap, presided over by two tennis umpires up stepladders who take money, dispense change and guard against pilfering.