A London Christmas: From Regent Street to Borough Market

London does Christmas at street level. The lights are strung the length of whole shopping streets, hung under Victorian market roofs and packed along the river, rather than gathered around a single giant tree. I walked it in December, in the cold, with a hot drink in hand, and what stays with me is how old much of it is. The angels over Regent Street date back to 1954. The market halls are Victorian. Even the fairground carousels are the traditional sort.

What follows is a walk through the parts I photographed: the West End lights, Covent Garden, the South Bank, Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland and Borough Market. Not one route, but a handful of stops, each lit in its own way.

London at Christmas at a Glance
👼 The icon · Regent Street’s Spirit of Christmas angels, seventeen-metre wingspans over the traffic, descended from London’s first street lights of 1954.
🎄 The photogenic one · Covent Garden’s 55ft tree in its oversized pot, with fake snow falling in the Piazza on the hour from midday to 9pm.
🌉 The view · The South Bank’s chalet market under the OXO Tower, with St Paul’s lit up across the water.
🎡 The big one · Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, free to enter with timed slots, running late November to early January.
🧀 The old one · Borough Market, a thousand years of trading under Victorian iron and glass, hung with festoon lights and a giant wreath.
🚇 Getting around · Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Southwark, Hyde Park Corner and London Bridge tubes cover the five stops.

The West End streets

The West End is where the shopping streets seem to compete to out-light one another, and Regent Street is the one most people come for. Its angels, called the Spirit of Christmas, hang the length of the street with their wings spread wide, each one about seventeen metres across. They are a modern reworking of Regent Street’s very first Christmas display, a flight of angels first strung up in 1954.

Off the main run, the smaller Mayfair lanes put up their own displays, and they are worth ducking down. Just off New Bond Street, a canopy of white starburst lights hangs over one of the cut-throughs near Bond Street station.

Covent Garden

Covent Garden splits its Christmas in two. Out in the open Piazza stands the tree, tall and drenched in red and white lights, with a giant red figure beside it for photographs.

Under the glass roof of the old Market Hall, the decorations turn oversized: bells and baubles the size of beach balls, and mirror balls scattering spots of light across the crowd below.

The South Bank

Across the Thames on the South Bank, the Christmas lights come with a view. The riverside walk runs right along the Thames, with St Paul’s Cathedral and the City lit up across the water and the OXO Tower glowing red on this side.

The walk fills with wooden chalets in December, selling mulled wine and hot food, with bars set up under the plane trees and people out in the cold around barrel tables.

There is a fairground carousel too, the old-fashioned kind with painted horses, turning at the edge of the market.

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland

For the full-scale version, everyone heads to Hyde Park. Winter Wonderland is the big one, a whole fairground and market that takes over a corner of the park each winter, with lit arches, beer halls, roller coasters and rows of stalls selling mulled wine and German beer. It runs at a different volume from the quiet market halls, loud and bright and enormous, and it has a post of its own, which is where most of it lives.

At its centre stands a giant cone of lights, taller than the rides around it.

Borough Market

The walk ends somewhere older and quieter, back across the river at Borough Market, London’s great food market under its Victorian glass roof. At Christmas the ironwork is hung with festoon lights and a huge wreath, the stalls below crammed with cheese, bread and chocolate.

This is the warm, slow end of the walk, the part I came for: a hot drink, the smell of the stalls, and a wander past a chocolate counter dressed up with a teddy in a woolly hat.

Bubbly Tips

• Go on a weeknight if you can. Weekend evenings on Regent Street and in Covent Garden are shoulder to shoulder. A Tuesday or Wednesday gives you the same lights with room to actually stop and look.
• Aim for the early evening window. Most displays switch on from mid-afternoon. Between about 4:30pm and 7pm you get dark skies with the shops still open, before the biggest crowds arrive.
• Shoot the Regent Street angels down the street. The angels line up best when photographed straight along the road rather than from the side. Use a traffic island or the pavement edge, and keep an eye out for buses.
• Time Covent Garden to the hour. The fake snow falls in the Piazza on the hour, every hour, from midday to 9pm. Arrive a few minutes before and you will catch it.
• Walk the South Bank from Waterloo to Blackfriars. This flat, car-free riverside stretch gives you the OXO Tower, the chalet bars and the St Paul’s view across the water, and it costs nothing.
• Book a Winter Wonderland slot. Entry is free, but a timed ticket saves queueing on busy nights. The rides and stalls are pay as you go, so bring a card and some cash.
• Do Borough Market by day. It is a daytime food market, and many stalls wind down by early evening. Weekends are the busiest, so a weekday lunchtime is the calmer visit.
• Dress for standing about in the cold. Nearly all of this is outdoors and on your feet. Warm layers and comfortable shoes make the difference between a long happy evening and a short one.
• Mind your tube stops. Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus for Regent Street, Covent Garden for the Piazza, Southwark or Blackfriars for the South Bank, Hyde Park Corner for Winter Wonderland, and London Bridge for Borough Market.

Final Thoughts

What I love about London at Christmas is that it does not all happen in one place. The giant scale is out at Winter Wonderland and along the lit-up West End streets. Twenty minutes away sits a thousand-year-old market with a wreath under a glass roof. The old and the enormous, side by side.

If I had to choose, it is the older, smaller end I come back for: the market halls, the riverside chalets, a hot drink in cold hands. The Regent Street angels are the photograph everyone takes home, but the part that stays with me is Borough Market on a December afternoon, chocolate and cheese under the festoon lights, with the trains rumbling overhead.

Until next time!

xoxo,
Bubbly 🎈