Petticoat Lane Market
One of the oldest street markets in Britain, free to wander, a noisy East End institution of clothes, leather and patter.
The lowdown
Petticoat Lane has been a market for more than four hundred years, and it remains one of the great free spectacles of the East End. The name is older than the prudish Victorians who renamed the street Middlesex Street, but the market kept its original title and its trade in clothing, leather and household goods.
On a Sunday hundreds of stalls fill the streets and the air is full of the old-fashioned cry of traders selling, bartering and putting on a show. It is not a polished tourist market, it is a working London one, which is exactly what makes wandering it for free such good fun.
Come for the atmosphere as much as the bargains, the patter, the crowds and the sheer continuity of a market that has run on this spot since the days of the Huguenot weavers.
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