A quiet terrace that turns into a market
Columbia Road is a short street of Victorian shopfronts in E2, between the top of Shoreditch and the western edge of Bethnal Green. Six days a week it is close to silent. On Sunday it becomes the flower market: stalls down both kerbs, buckets of cut stems, trays of bedding plants and pots of herbs, and traders calling across the road to each other while the first customers are still finishing their coffee.
The name belongs to something that has gone. Columbia Market was an enormous Gothic market hall built beside the street by the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts in 1869, meant to bring fresh food at fair prices to one of the poorest districts in London. It never worked as a food market and was pulled down in the fifties. The flowers, which were never part of anybody's plan, are what lasted.
Why the first hour is the one to see
Before nine the stalls are full, the street is walkable, and you can stop in front of a bucket of ranunculus without an elbow in your back. The low morning light runs straight down the terrace and does the rest. The traders have time to talk, and most of them know a great deal about what they are selling and will tell you how long it will last in a warm room.
By half past ten it is shoulder to shoulder from one end to the other, with a slow shuffle down the middle and nowhere to stop. That is the version in most photographs and the least pleasant one to be inside. There is a second good moment at the very end, when the stalls are clearing and the calls get louder, but it is a scramble rather than a stroll. For two people who want to look at things and talk, early wins every time.
The shops behind the stalls
Most visitors look at the flowers and never turn round. Behind the stalls, the shopfronts along both sides of the street are small independent businesses, many of them only properly open at the weekend: little galleries, plant and garden shops, homeware, a bakery counter or two, and places that sell one kind of thing very well. They open with the market, so the first hour is also the only time you can get into them without a queue.
Ezra Street, which runs off the market, has cobbles and small yards and is the calmest few yards anywhere near the stalls on a Sunday morning. The Royal Oak, the handsome old pub on the street itself, is the obvious place to sit down once the morning is done. A hundred yards beyond the last stall the terraces go back to being ordinary Bethnal Green streets, which is part of the charm.
Where the morning goes next
A few minutes north, across Hackney Road, Hackney City Farm keeps animals and a vegetable garden on Goldsmith's Row, and it is as calm on a Sunday as the market is not. Ten minutes or so south, Brick Lane runs its own Sunday market, louder and hungrier, with food from every direction. West, past the end of the street, Arnold Circus sits on its raised mound at the centre of the Boundary Estate, the oldest council estate in the country, with a bandstand on top and benches round it.
For breakfast, Calvert Avenue off Arnold Circus is where most people who live here walk. Shoreditch High Street and Hoxton stations, both on the Overground, are each around ten minutes from the market on foot, and Bethnal Green on the Central line is a longer walk east. If this Sunday follows a Saturday in E8, our note on Broadway Market covers the other half of the weekend.
An unscripted Sunday morning
Of all the bookings on this site, a Sunday on Columbia Road is the one that most needs no plan. Coffee in a paper cup, a slow walk down one side of the street and back up the other, a bunch of something wrapped in paper, and a conversation that has nothing to prove. That is what the girlfriend experience means at this desk: company that behaves like company, with no script and no clock visibly running.
Some of these Sundays begin at the market. More of them begin the night before, with an overnight that ends in the morning rather than at the door, and the walk to the flowers is simply its last hour. Either way, say in your message that the morning is the point, and Nell will suggest somebody who is good at eight o'clock and not only at midnight.
Who is good at eight in the morning
Patricia works the Hackney Road side of E2, minutes from the market, with auburn brown hair, a level gaze and no need to fill a silence. Lea, from the market side of Spitalfields, has auburn waves and remembers every side street in the East End, which on a morning like this means she knows where the good coffee is. Both are on the auburn shortlist, three names long and honestly counted.
Karolina works the Columbia Road end of E2, tall and direct, with heavy black hair and firm opinions about which stall is worth the wait. She sits on the raven haired list rather than the auburn one, but on this particular street she is hard to beat. Everyone on the board can be asked.
Lengths, and what to tell the desk
Two hours at £500 covers the market and breakfast without rushing either. Three hours at £700 adds a long lunch or the walk down to Brick Lane. The overnight at £1,800 ends here naturally, with the market as the last hour of the ten. Her journey is inside all of those figures.
Send the desk the start time, where to meet, and whether it is a morning booking or the end of a night. Nell confirms in writing with the minute she expects to be there. The fee is handed to her in person when she arrives, and the rest of the ladder is on rates.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the auburn and red list in the shortlists.