Description
Camden Market is a sprawl of adjoining markets in Camden Town, north London, beside the lock on Regent's Canal: more than 1,000 stalls, shops, bars and street-food counters in old warehouses, stables and railway arches, with crafts, vintage clothes and alternative fashion.
It is not one market but several, each with its own character. Camden Lock Market, by the water, is where it all started and is still the main place for crafts, with books, jewelry, clothes and plenty of food stalls around a brick and cast-iron hall built in the style of the area's old industrial buildings.
The Stables Market is the most atmospheric part. It fills the former Pickfords stables and a listed horse hospital, built for the horses that pulled the company's vans and canal barges, and many of its shops sit inside the arches of a railway viaduct, linked by ramps and bridges.
Here the market shows its most eccentric side: furniture, second-hand finds and 20th-century antiques, handmade objects, and clothes for goths and cybergoths, from coffin-shaped handbags to neon PVC outfits. Chain stores are not allowed, so every stall is a small independent business.
Across Chalk Farm Road, Hawley Wharf is the newest section, a covered building by the canal with dozens of food counters and shops. Further south, the small Inverness Street Market near Camden Town station is the oldest of all: a street market has stood there since the late 19th century.
Food is everywhere, and eating your way through the stalls from one cuisine to the next is part of the visit. Weekends are the busiest time, with the crowds that make the place lively and slow to cross.
The market was born almost by chance. By the early 1970s the canal trade had ended and a planned urban motorway made any permanent redevelopment of the wharves impossible, so in 1974 a small weekly crafts market moved in. When the motorway was abandoned two years later, the market was already part of Camden's identity.
From there it kept growing, from temporary stalls to permanent buildings, until it drew around 250,000 people a week. In 2004 the radio and TV presenter Chris Evans even sold off his own sofas, televisions and crockery from a stall in the Stables Market.
It is not one market but several, each with its own character. Camden Lock Market, by the water, is where it all started and is still the main place for crafts, with books, jewelry, clothes and plenty of food stalls around a brick and cast-iron hall built in the style of the area's old industrial buildings.
The Stables Market is the most atmospheric part. It fills the former Pickfords stables and a listed horse hospital, built for the horses that pulled the company's vans and canal barges, and many of its shops sit inside the arches of a railway viaduct, linked by ramps and bridges.
Here the market shows its most eccentric side: furniture, second-hand finds and 20th-century antiques, handmade objects, and clothes for goths and cybergoths, from coffin-shaped handbags to neon PVC outfits. Chain stores are not allowed, so every stall is a small independent business.
Across Chalk Farm Road, Hawley Wharf is the newest section, a covered building by the canal with dozens of food counters and shops. Further south, the small Inverness Street Market near Camden Town station is the oldest of all: a street market has stood there since the late 19th century.
Food is everywhere, and eating your way through the stalls from one cuisine to the next is part of the visit. Weekends are the busiest time, with the crowds that make the place lively and slow to cross.
The market was born almost by chance. By the early 1970s the canal trade had ended and a planned urban motorway made any permanent redevelopment of the wharves impossible, so in 1974 a small weekly crafts market moved in. When the motorway was abandoned two years later, the market was already part of Camden's identity.
From there it kept growing, from temporary stalls to permanent buildings, until it drew around 250,000 people a week. In 2004 the radio and TV presenter Chris Evans even sold off his own sofas, televisions and crockery from a stall in the Stables Market.