Camden Market guide: the Lock, the Stables, Hawley Wharf and Buck Street
Open daily 10:00 to 19:00, more than 1,000 stalls, shops and kitchens, and four markets that keep four different sets of hours. How to do Camden Market properly, from the Stables cobbles to the late food halls at Hawley Wharf.
By Only Camden Editorial
Camden Market is open every day from 10:00 to 19:00, bank holidays included, and the only day it shuts is Christmas Day. Most stalls trade 10:00 to 18:00, so the last hour is for the restaurants and bars. Get off at Camden Town and walk five minutes up the High Street, or come in from Chalk Farm at the top end. Do not drive: there is no car park. Here is how the four markets fit together, and where we would spend the day.
How it works
Officially it is one market in three quarters: the Lock, the Stables and Hawley Wharf. The fourth, on Buck Street at the station end of the High Street, now trades as Boxpark Camden. Between them the owners count more than 1,000 places to shop, eat, drink and dance, which is why nobody does it all in one go. Pick two, eat in the middle, and save the rest for another Saturday.
It started small. In 1974 a crafts and antiques market of 16 stalls opened in the old T. E. Dingwall builders’ yard by the canal, on Sundays only. Before that, Camden’s big trade was gin, shipped out along the Regent’s Canal. The yard is still there, and so is the venue that took its name: Dingwalls.
The Lock
The Lock is the original, at the canal end of Camden Lock Place, with the main entrance off the High Street and a second from the towpath. This is the craft stalls, vinyl, vintage clothes and handmade jewellery, plus the barges and the canal-side bars. It is also where the boats go from: 45-minute canal tours leave from West Yard and run to Little Venice. West Yard itself is the cobbled yard by the water where the street food traders set up, and the place to eat if you want to watch the lock gates work.
The Stables
Cross Chalk Farm Road, or come in through the Horse Hospital entrance, and you are in the Stables. This was the Pickfords stables, with saddlers’ workshops, tack rooms and a horse hospital for the animals that pulled the firm’s carts. The yards are listed and the cobbles are real, which is lovely until you are pushing a buggy. Here you get the big names, Dr. Martens in a two-storey shop and Cyberdog with its robot statues on the door, plus furniture, antiques and the North Yard restaurants. It gets a guide of its own on Only Camden, because it deserves one.
Hawley Wharf
Hawley Wharf is the new bit, on the canal across from the Lock, and it keeps different hours. The food halls in Waterside Halls run from 11:30 to 23:00 every day, with more than 30 street food counters, so this is where to eat after the stalls have packed up. The shops keep shorter hours: 12:00 to 18:00 Monday to Wednesday, 11:00 to 18:00 Thursday, 11:00 to 19:00 Friday and Saturday, 11:00 to 18:00 Sunday. There is a Curzon cinema in the railway arches and Babylon Park underneath, an indoor fairground with a rollercoaster, bumper cars and soft play. It is also the easiest quarter to get round: step-free, with lifts to every floor and a Changing Places toilet.
Boxpark Camden, Buck Street
The shipping container market on Buck Street, opposite the station end of the High Street, was Buck Street Market until Boxpark took it over. It reopened as Boxpark Camden over three floors, with around 60 food and retail traders, two bars and a rooftop. It also stays open the latest of the lot: 10:00 to 23:00 Monday to Thursday, 10:00 to 23:30 on Friday and Saturday and 10:00 to 21:00 on Sunday, with a happy hour from 17:00 early in the week. The food runs from Yorkshire Burrito and Black Bear Burger to Pho Kae noodles, Elia Greek street food and Jhol Momo dumplings.
And if you want the market Camden had before any of this, walk down Inverness Street off the High Street. It is a council-licensed street market, the last remnant of the old Camden Town Market that traded on the High Street in the 19th century. Stalls come and go, so treat it as a bonus, not a destination.
How to do it
- Go early or go midweek. The Infatuation calls the Stables “completely mobbed at the weekend”, and it is right. A Tuesday at 11:00 is a different place.
- Start at the top. Come out of Chalk Farm, do the Stables first, cross to the Lock, eat at West Yard or Hawley Wharf, then walk back down the High Street to Camden Town.
- Eat late at Hawley Wharf or Boxpark. They are the two that keep serving after 19:00.
- Check the stall, not the market. The traders are independent and set their own hours, so if you are crossing London for one shop, ring it first.
- Mind the cobbles. Much of the Lock and the Stables is step-free, but the floors are old and uneven. Hawley Wharf is the smooth option.
For what to eat once you are in, start at West Yard by the water, then read our Camden Market food guide. For a pint afterwards, the Lock Tavern is across Chalk Farm Road from the Stables, and the Hawley Arms is round the back of the Lock on Castlehaven Road. Full opening times and the market map are on the Camden Market FAQs.
