The Antiques Mile of Portobello Market

Why is it significant?

Here the street suddenly fills up: arcades with low doorways, trestle tables of silver spoons, brass telescopes, old maps, cameras, teacups and military medals, and a slow river of people drifting between them.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Here the street suddenly fills up: arcades with low doorways, trestle tables of silver spoons, brass telescopes, old maps, cameras, teacups and military medals, and a slow river of people drifting between them. If you are here on a Saturday, you are standing in one of the largest antiques markets anywhere in the world.

It did not start with antiques at all. As the new houses of Notting Hill filled up in the second half of the nineteenth century, costermongers set up barrows of fruit, vegetables and fish along the road to feed them, and by the end of Queen Victoria's reign Portobello was a busy everyday market. Some of the food stalls further north are the direct descendants of those barrows.

The antiques came after the Second World War. London's great junk and curiosity market in Islington, the Caledonian Market, closed when war broke out and never reopened in its old form, and some of its dealers drifted west to Portobello. By the 1950s and 60s collectors, young designers and film crews were hunting bargains here, and the arcades multiplied until, on a good Saturday, more than a thousand dealers set out their wares, by some counts.

Look closely at the stalls and you will see the market's unwritten rules. The serious traders arrive in the half-light, very early, and the best pieces often change hands between dealers long before the first tourist arrives. Haggling is expected... politely.

And Portobello has a famous fictional resident. In Michael Bond's books, Paddington Bear's dear friend Mr Gruber keeps an antique shop on Portobello Road, where the bear from darkest Peru drops in for buns and cocoa. The films brought him back to these very pavements, and you will spot Paddington peering out of more than one shop window. Now leave the market for a moment: turn left, westward, into the quieter streets of the Ladbroke estate, towards the great green garden squares hidden behind the houses.