Thursday markets in London

Good for: antiques
Alfie’s is packed to the rafters with handsome twentieth-century home decor, hosting more than 100 dealers in vintage furniture and fashion, art, accessories, books, maps and more. Dodo Posters do 1920s and ’30s ads.

Good for: food, lunch
This small, buzzy street market, in a sometimes sleazy area, is one of London’s oldest. On weekdays it hosts a great selection of street food stalls over the lunchtime rush hour.

Good for: food
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, lunch
London’s oldest market – dating back to the thirteenth century – is also the busiest, and the most popular for gourmet goodies. Traders satisfy the city’s insatiable appetite for artisan cheeses and ham from acorn-fed pigs. If food is your thing, then Borough, with its abundance of beautifully displayed organic fruit and veg, cakes, bread, olive oil, fish, meat and booze, is the place to go.

Good for: clothing, 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.

Good for: food, crafts
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: antiques, food
There are plenty of stalls selling bric-a-brac, second-hand clothes, ethnic ornaments, CDs, crafts and jewellery galore at Greenwich Market. Thursday is best time for unearthing unusual finds and provides a selection of stalls dealing in antique jewellery, vintage clothes, old books, music and collectibles – the Calneva Vintage stall with its cool 1950s and ’60s homewares, ceramics, lamps, handbags and compacts is just one such example.

Good for: food, lunch
Popular, upbeat lunchtime market selling cut-price clothing and household items, plus flowers, gifts, fruit and veg and excellent street food.

Good for: food, clothes, jewellery
A street market since Victorian times, there’s some quality veg, women’s clothes, decent jewellery and vintage shops.