Exmouth Market is a pedestrianised street in Clerkenwell with over twenty market pitches down the middle of it and about forty restaurants, bars and cafés along the sides. Islington Council licenses the market Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, and that is all: there is no market at the weekend and the street is at its emptiest on a Sunday. One building on it is listed, and the reason is that Joseph Grimaldi, the clown, lived there.
The street is about two hundred metres long, running east from Rosoman Street to Farringdon Road, with the tall Italianate campanile of the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer at the eastern end. It was paved over and given to pedestrians, which is why it works: tables spill out, the stalls stand in the middle, and no traffic comes through.
Our guide to Leather Lane and Clerkenwell shopping covers the lunch hour in this quarter and how the three weekday markets compare; Spanish food and tapas in London owns the restaurant at the western end that made the street's reputation; and London markets by day of the week sets Exmouth Market against the others. This page is the street: the hours, the stalls that are actually licensed, what each is rated, and what to do here when the market is not on.
Exmouth Market at a glance
- Where
- EC1R, between Rosoman Street and Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell
- Market hours
- Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. No market on Saturday or Sunday
- Pitches
- Over twenty, per Islington Council. Street food, snacks and drinks
- Busiest
- Weekday lunch, about 12:00 to 14:00
- Nearest stations
- Farringdon, ten minutes' walk (TfL: 746 m); Angel, twelve minutes (773 m)
- Listed buildings on the street
- One: number 56, Grade II, listed 30 September 1994
The hours, which decide everything
Islington Council publishes the market's hours as Monday 9am to 6pm and the same on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There is no Saturday or Sunday entry, and the council does not list one. Nothing else here matters as much, because Exmouth Market is often written up as a weekend destination and it is not one.
In practice the licensed hours are wider than the useful ones. The stalls are set up through the morning, the queues form from about half past twelve as the offices of Clerkenwell and the Farringdon Road come out, and by three in the afternoon several pitches have packed up whatever the licence says. If you want the market at its fullest, arrive at a quarter past twelve.
The restaurants and bars along the sides keep their own hours and many of them do open at the weekend. So a Saturday here gets you a pedestrian street with tables on it, and a Sunday gets you a quiet street where a good deal is shut. Neither gets you the market.
Do not plan a weekend trip around this market. Islington Council licenses it Monday to Friday only. On a Saturday you will find the street and the restaurants but no stalls, and on a Sunday you may find very little at all. If your free day is a weekend, our markets-by-day guide lists the ones that trade then.
Photo: No Swan So Fine · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
What is on the stalls, and what each one scored
Street food stalls are the hardest thing in London to write about honestly, because they change and because a stall has a kitchen like any restaurant. The way to do it is to read the register, which lists each pitch as a mobile caterer at a "street record" address on Exmouth Market with the postcode EC1R 4QB.
In September 2026 five licensed pitches appeared on the register. Two held five stars at their last inspection — a German barbecue stall, inspected June 2026, and a Thai stall, inspected October 2025. One held four stars, and two held three, both inspected in the autumn and winter of 2025. Nothing on the street was below three.
That is a good record by the standards of London street food, and it is much better than the equivalent street a mile east. It also means the sensible instruction is not "avoid the stalls" but "look at the number". Every trader must have a rating and you can search the address on the Food Standards Agency register in seconds.
As for what to queue for: the honest answer is whichever queue is longest at about 12:45, because the stalls rotate and a list published on a travel site goes stale within a season. The one structural tip worth having is that the stalls at the Rosoman Street end catch the lunch rush later than those at the Farringdon Road end, so if the queue looks impossible, walk west.
The clown at number 56
The only listed building on Exmouth Market is number 56, on the south side, and its listing is one of the more enjoyable documents in the national list.
Historic England lists it Grade II, added on 30 September 1994, and describes a terraced house with a shop of about 1820 to 1830, in multi-coloured stock brick laid in Flemish bond, with a nineteenth-century wooden shopfront altered in the twentieth century. Four storeys, two windows wide, with the shop entrance set at an angle in a deep recess and the house entrance in a second recess to the right. The windows get shorter as they go up, which is the standard Georgian trick for making a building look taller than it is.
Then the listing adds the history, and this is the part to read before you walk past it: Joseph Grimaldi, the most famous London clown, lived here from 1818 until 1828, the year of his retirement. From 1800 he had dominated the stage of nearby Sadler's Wells as the figure of Clown in the English harlequinade, and the listing states that his special historic importance lies in the fact that many of his innovations became distinctive characteristics of the pantomime clown.
Sadler's Wells is a ten-minute walk north-west of the street and is still a working theatre: see Sadler's Wells and dance in London for what is on now. The connection between the two is the reason this street existed in the form it did: a theatre at one end of a short walk and lodgings for theatre people at the other.
The church with the campanile
The building that closes the eastern end of the street is the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, an Anglican church of the 1880s built to look like an Italian basilica, with a free-standing bell tower. It is the reason the street photographs well: the tower gives the view east a full stop, which few London streets have.
It is a working parish church rather than a visitor attraction, and its opening depends on services and volunteers, so treat it as something to look at from outside unless you find the door open. For churches that are reliably open to visitors in this quarter, the Charterhouse is ten minutes south-east and our Clerkenwell guide covers St John's Gate and the rest.
Eating along the sides, and which ratings we checked
Forty-two establishments came back from the register for Exmouth Market in September 2026, of which twenty-one had Islington addresses on the street itself. The spread was wide but the floor was three: nothing on the street was rated below three at its last inspection.
Places that held five stars when we looked, with the month of their last inspection: an all-day café-restaurant at 11–13 (May 2025), a burger restaurant at 17 (July 2026), a Greek café at 67 (March 2024), a bakery at 33–35 (June 2025), a pizza restaurant at 15 (May 2025), a Japanese place at 51 (May 2024), a brewpub at 37 (May 2025), a Mexican-style bar at 8–10 (November 2025), a café at 70 (August 2026), a Sri Lankan kitchen at 6 (June 2025), and the two pubs at either end of the street: The Clerkenwell Tavern at number 2 (September 2025) and The Exmouth Arms at 23 (October 2025). The Spanish restaurant in the middle, which our tapas guide covers, held five stars in May 2026.
Several well-known names on the street held three at their last inspection. Three is above our floor and we will not name a business to criticise it, but it is the reason to check the number yourself rather than trusting a reputation. Our guide to cheap eats in London puts the street's prices in context, and North African food in London covers the wider tradition that the street's best-known kitchen draws on.
The best cheap lunch here is a stall and a bench, not a table. A stall lunch costs a fraction of a sit-down main course, the stalls are all within forty metres of each other so you can compare before you commit, and Spa Fields, a public park with grass and benches, is two minutes north up Rosoman Street. On a dry day that is the whole trick.
Around the corner, in ten minutes or less
- Spa Fields, two minutes north: a small public park on the site of an old burial ground, and the nearest grass to sit on.
- Leather Lane, about eight minutes south-east: the other weekday lunch market in this quarter, licensed from 7am to 7pm but in practice busiest from noon. Our Clerkenwell shopping guide compares the two.
- Whitecross Street, about fifteen minutes east: the third weekday market, with different hours again. See our Whitecross Street page.
- Hatton Garden, about ten minutes south: the jewellery quarter. See Hatton Garden.
- Chapel Market and the Angel, twelve minutes north: a traditional street market that trades Tuesday to Sunday, which makes it the weekend alternative. See Chapel Market and Islington shopping.
Getting here
Farringdon is the station to use: TfL's walking directions give 746 metres and ten minutes from the station to the street. Farringdon is in Zone 1 and has the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines, Thameslink, and the Elizabeth line, which makes it one of the best-connected stations in London and puts Exmouth Market within about twenty minutes of Heathrow's terminals by rail.
Angel is the other option, twelve minutes away and 773 metres by TfL's measure. Both are Zone 1, so a day's travel falls inside the £8.90 daily cap for Zones 1 and 2 on contactless or Oyster.
One thing to note if you are eating here in the evening: neither station has a Night Tube service. The Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and Elizabeth lines run no night service at all, and the Northern line's night trains use the Charing Cross branch, which does not call at Angel. After the last trains it is night buses, and our night bus guide explains the network. Farringdon has lifts, four of them according to TfL's station data; Angel is served by escalators rather than lifts.
Frequently asked questions
Is Exmouth Market open on Saturday or Sunday?
The market is not. Islington Council licenses it Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, and lists no weekend trading. The restaurants and bars along the street keep their own hours and many open at weekends, so a Saturday still gets you a pedestrian street with tables, but Sunday is the quietest day of the week here.
What time is best for Exmouth Market?
About a quarter past twelve on a weekday. The stalls are set up, the queues have not yet peaked and the restaurants still have tables. By three in the afternoon some pitches have gone home regardless of the licensed hours, because the office lunch trade is what the market runs on.
Which station is nearest to Exmouth Market?
Farringdon, which Transport for London measures at 746 metres and ten minutes' walk. It has the Elizabeth line, Thameslink and three Underground lines. Angel is the alternative at twelve minutes and 773 metres. Both are in Zone 1, and neither has a Night Tube service.
Why is number 56 Exmouth Market listed?
For its architecture and for Joseph Grimaldi. Historic England lists the house, of about 1820 to 1830, at Grade II, and the entry records that Grimaldi, the most famous London clown, lived there from 1818 until his retirement in 1828, and that many of his innovations became characteristics of the pantomime clown. He had been the star of Sadler's Wells, ten minutes away.
Is Exmouth Market expensive?
The sit-down restaurants are priced for Clerkenwell's offices, which is to say mid-range to expensive for London. The stalls are not: a hot lunch from a pitch in the middle of the street is one of the cheaper proper meals in Zone 1, and the price gap between the two is the widest of any street we cover in this quarter.
Sources
- Islington Council - Markets, Exmouth Market opening hours and number of pitches (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - 56 Exmouth Market, list entry 1195589, Grade II (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene rating register (searched by address, Exmouth Market EC1R, including the street-record stall pitches) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Journey Planner, used for the walking times from Farringdon (746 metres) and Angel (773 metres) to Exmouth Market (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - detailed station data (lifts at Farringdon and Angel) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Night Tube lines and stations (checked September 2026)