15 beautiful and important places in Walworth
15 beautiful and important places in Walworth
Including seven local restaurants
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Every other week I publish an article about everyday places in London with unusual staying power, like shops, buildings, restaurants and public spaces.
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Take a walk down Walworth Road and you’ll pass caffs, chains, launderettes, halal butchers, Latino barbers and Caribbean takeaways. There are ornate Victorian shops on this road too, as well as faded adverts of a similar age. It is a tubeless street with plenty of buses.
One of London’s busiest markets branches off Walworth Road, officially running since 1880. Other nearby streets contain tenement buildings from around the same period, along with more modern forms of affordable housing. “It has one foot in the 21st century and the other still in the 20th,” a Walworth native called Katie Rowe told me.
Others I spoke to worry that the steel and glass of the new Elephant and Castle will continue to encroach further south. Major council estates in the area have been demolished in recent years and continue to be under the mission of “regeneration.”
“I feel like we’ve done well to keep Walworth Road as it is for so long,” a resident of 28 years called Cleo said. “I understand things change… I just hope it can be done with respect for the current community.”
Much of what is here is also inexpensive, including the food. You’ll find jerk, jollof and jellied eels in Walworth, as well as ceviche, belt noodles and seekh kebab rolls. It isn’t hard to find a pint for under a fiver, or lunch for around the same price.
I’ve only been coming to Walworth since 2015, and I remain a visitor. While I wish I could still go bowling up the road, I’m glad to say most of the places that first captured my imagination have evolved over the last nine years, rather than faded away. Lately, I’ve been getting to know lots of other places too.
As with my Catford guide, I don’t claim that this is a definitive list of the good places in Walworth, nor am I qualified to produce one. This is a collection of the pubs, shops, restaurants and other spaces that I’ve been drawn to: I think they should all be celebrated, and I hope they stay around for much longer.
Arments Pie & Mash
Arments has moved around, so its 45-year-old premises aren’t as old as the centenarian business that occupies them. Its wooden booths hark back to its earliest days, but I like its laminate tables too. You can eat some of London’s better mincemeat pies here, with a reliably crispy exterior and a beefier filling than most.
Like the branches of M. Manze in Peckham and Bermondsey, Arments reveals how this part of south London has the same cockney roots as the East End. I am particularly intrigued by its well-equipped pie factory of a kitchen, which is at the centre of the building rather than hidden in the back. You can glimpse it as you pay; it looks like the kind of thing a wholesaler would make good use of.
A long-time customer called Dan Spry confirmed my theory that Arments’ postal pies are a big part of its offering nowadays, which I reckon subsidises the running costs of its bricks-and-mortar shop. “For all the old heads in Kent, Sussex, Surrey [the postal pies are] a lifeline,” Dan told me. “I’ve even had Arments at a christening.”
Pie House, 7-9 Westmoreland Rd, London SE17 2AX
East Street Market
A whole other high street within a high street erupts on East Street six days a week, which some older people still refer to as “East Lane”. You can find things like toys, bedding, makeup, cassava and coconuts every day the market’s on, but it is especially full of life on Saturdays, when the seafood stall is there.
Like Ridley Road in Dalston, a big part of East Street’s personality is its ecosystem of inexpensive food places. This includes Jack’s Cafe, which serves fry-ups for £4.80; Kebab Hut, which sells rice and dal for £4.95; and Links Kitchen, a Caribbean place which does a lunch special for £5.50. “I don’t have any fears for East Street Market,” a longtime local resident called Andrew Humphrey told me. “It has spent decades and centuries evolving. It is a destination and feels like it will always be.”
East St, London SE17 1EL
The Pullens Buildings
As with the Roupell Street Conservation Area in Waterloo, the protected streets that constitute The Pullens Buildings are clustered in a quadrilateral shape. The enclosed configuration of these Victorian tenements, forerunners to modern flats, only enhances their striking oldness. You can look into their communal entranceways without feeling too intrusive, to see all the ceramic tiles and wooden bannisters within. I especially love the cobblestoned workshop yards between them, which remain in use today.
Penton Pl, London SE17 3SH