Maltby Street Market

If Borough Market is the famous older sibling, Maltby Street Market is the cooler younger one that the locals don't want you to know about. Tucked beneath Victorian railway arches in Bermondsey, this weekend food market started in 2009 when the owners of LASSCO, an architectural salvage company, offered their yard to a handful of food traders as a way of using the space on quiet Saturdays. It has stayed deliberately, stubbornly small.

The railway arches themselves are the real history here. Built between 1836 and 1839 for the London and Greenwich Railway, they carried the capital's first steam railway and the earliest elevated railway in the world. The seven arches that run the length of the market now house permanent restaurants, bars, and food businesses — the kind of places that smoke their own brisket, cure their own charcuterie, and bake sourdough at four in the morning.

The market's charm is in its intimacy. Where Borough Market can feel like navigating a rugby scrum, Maltby Street has the feel of a neighbourhood gathering. The narrow yard, surrounded by salvage yards and industrial buildings, creates an atmosphere that's more Berlin than London. On a Saturday morning you might find Waffle On making Belgian waffles with Nutella, Bad Brownie selling their famous salted caramel slabs, and St John bakery pulling doughnuts from the oven.

Maltby Street itself was once the site of a ropewalk — a long, narrow path where rope makers twisted hemp fibres into the ropes that rigged the ships docked downstream. The name Rich's Ropewalk has carried over to the present day in the market yard's name, a quiet reminder that this patch of Bermondsey has been a working space for centuries.