Camden Market opened in 1974 as a place where people sold things off tables. It now has a thousand traders, a food hall and a Dr. Martens shop, and from 3 October it is putting a car boot sale back in the middle of it.
Every Saturday from 3 October to 28 November, 11am to 5pm, Hawley Wharf hosts a free open-air vintage market run with Bootyfull Car Boot. Vintage clothes, retro accessories, rare vinyl, original art and jewellery, with the Hawley Wharf food traders already there around the edges.
Free to walk in, no booking, and it runs for nine Saturdays.
Who is running it
Bootyfull Car Boot is a north London operation that started as the Kentish Town Car Boot in 2022, moved to Gospel Oak, and settled at William Ellis School in Highgate. If you have been to one, you already know the standard: it is curated rather than a field of people selling their loft, which is exactly why it works as a takeover of a market that has spent two decades becoming something else.
Sharon Steele, who founded it, says the vintage and retro focus is a good fit with Camden’s history, and Abdul Hai of LabTech, which runs the market, makes the same point from the other direction: second-hand is where the place came from.
If you want to sell
Pitches are £40 including a table, booked through Bootyfull directly. For a Saturday at Camden with footfall that size, that is cheap, and it is the detail most of the coverage will leave out.
The London x London Take: Go on 3 October rather than in November. The first couple of Saturdays of any new market are when the sellers are still working out what this crowd buys and the pricing has not yet found its level, and Camden in October is a great deal more pleasant than Camden in late November. Come at 11am when it opens, do Hawley Wharf first while the rails are full, then eat. And if you have been avoiding Camden Market for years on the grounds that it stopped being a market, this is the bit that answers you.
Need to know
- What: Camden Market vintage market with Bootyfull Car Boot
- Where: Hawley Wharf, Camden Market, London NW1 8AA
- When: Every Saturday, 3 October to 28 November, 11am to 5pm
- Price: Free
- Stalls: £40 including a table, via bootyfullcarboot.com
- Nearest station: Camden Town or Camden Road
More of the area in our guide to Camden Market, more secondhand in our pick of London’s best vintage shops, and the rest of the city’s stalls in the best London markets.
