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Notting Hill Shops: Where to Shop on Portobello Road and Beyond

Portobello Road runs five separate markets along its length, and Saturday is the only day all of them trade. Come then for the whole thing and expect crowds. Come midweek and you get a calmer street with fewer stalls, which suits a lot of people better.

The Notting Hill Bookshop with its navy fascia, beside a mint-green doughnut shop, both with people outside.
Shopfronts off Portobello Road, and the queue that comes with them. Photograph by Norali Nayla on Unsplash.

The market is older than the neighbourhood

Portobello Road was a country lane through farmland in the 1700s, running up to Portobello Farm. The farm took its name from a naval victory at Porto Bello in Panama in 1739, which is how a road in west London ended up named after a town on the Caribbean coast.

Farmers sold produce along the lane from the beginning. The antiques trade arrived in the 1940s and 1950s and never left. Today around a thousand traders work Portobello and Golborne between them, and more than a hundred thousand people come through on a Friday or Saturday.

The 1999 film did the rest, and the crowds it brought are the thing to plan around rather than be surprised by. Start early and you get the market at its best.

What runs where

The market is not one thing. It changes character four times over roughly a mile, and knowing the order saves you an hour of walking the wrong way.

  1. Portobello Road

    • The antiques runChepstow Villas to Elgin Crescent

      The famous stretch, and the reason most people come. Saturdays only if you want the dealers out.

    • Fresh produceElgin Crescent to Talbot Road

      Where the market still does the job it was built for in the 1700s.

    • Vintage clothingTalbot Road to the Westway

      The strongest of the clothing, and busier than the antiques by mid-morning.

    • Second-hand goodsWestway to Golborne Road

      Cheaper, scruffier, and the part locals actually shop.

  2. Westbourne Grove

    • Wild at Heart

      A florist with a shopfront half of Instagram has photographed.

    • RIXO

      Hand-painted prints, and quieter here than on the Kings Road.

    • Sézane

      French staples, and a shop that rewards going in with nothing in mind.

  3. Ledbury Road

    • Caramel

      Lifestyle and childrenswear with a vintage sensibility. Baskets, blankets, crockery, candles.

  4. Golborne Road

    • The vintage furniture run

      Most of a street given over to it, and the least performed part of the neighbourhood.

The shopping that is not the market

Most visitors do Portobello and leave, which is why the boutiques two streets east stay pleasant on the busiest day of the week. Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road carry the fashion and homeware independents, and they are open the six days the market is not.

If you want Notting Hill without the queue, this is the answer. Come on a weekday, skip the market entirely, and walk the Grove instead.

Go north

Push past the Westway to Golborne Road and the neighbourhood stops performing. Vintage furniture, Portuguese and Moroccan food, and prices that have not been set with tourists in mind. It is the part of Notting Hill that still belongs to the people who live there.

How do I get there?

Nearest tube
Notting Hill Gate, on the Central, District and Circle lines, for the southern end. Ladbroke Grove on the Hammersmith and City line puts you at the northern end near Golborne Road.
When to go
Saturday from 8.30am for the full market, and it peaks by noon. Any weekday for the boutiques without the crowds.
How long you need
Half a day for the market end to end. Two hours if you are only doing Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road.
What else is close
Holland Park is a fifteen minute walk south. Kensington Palace Gardens is beyond it.

Go, if you have the Saturday

Portobello only works in person. Nothing online replaces finding the thing you were not looking for on a table of things nobody catalogued.

But the market runs one day a week, and most of us are busy on it.

STREET brings the neighbourhood's independents to your door the other six days. Browse what they actually have, buy from the ones nearest you, and it comes to you instead. Notting Hill is in our first launch area.

Go when you can. We will cover the weeks you cannot.

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Nearby guides

Kensington High Street is south of Holland Park. Carnaby Street is the same instinct for small premises, an hour east.