The Coolest Neighbourhoods in London

A couple of decades ago, you’d be advised to scoot straight through Peckham on the 36 bus as there was so much crime. Fast-forward to a new century, and a fresh younger generation, priced out of more central areas, has made the place one of London’s coolest neighbourhoods with its thriving art scene. The car-park rooftop bar Frank’s, indie-store scene around Bellenden Road and chic cafes will ensure you won’t spend time in central London bars ever again.

East-end Dalston has been hip for years, and while the edgier Peckham is nipping at its designer heels, the area is not about to become staid and stuffy just yet. At weekends, the streets are filled with out-of-town kids looking for clubs, but the arty vibe that put Dalston on the map in the early millennium is still there. Get off the Kingsland Road main drag to discover literary cafes, community gardens and more pop-up supper clubs than you can shake a cocktail stick at.

In the early 1990s, Stoke Newington was gentrifying as the upwardly mobile moved into the spacious terrace houses lining raffish Church Street. Now with its own literary festival, it’s where cool kids with careers and children move to. The area’s reputation is assured by indie boozers, posh pizza parlours, underground cocktail bars – try martinis at Original Sin – and some of the best charity shops in the city.

Established in the 1990s by the band named after its E17 postcode, Walthamstow has benefitted in recent years from the extortionate house prices in adjacent Hackney. People who want more than a box to live in have moved to this creative, trendy neighbourhood. As a result, it’s evolved into a hive of community and arts festivals, which support a booming network of new artists and neon art gallery God’s Own Junkyard. Epping Forest and Hackney Marshes are on your doorstep and you can still be in Oxford Street in 30 minutes by tube.

In the 1980s you couldn’t have paid hipsters to live here. Nowadays, British pop stars have moved into its leafy streets and big houses – just a taxi hop from Central London. Spread out between Ladbroke Grove and Queen’s Park, the neighbourhood blends posh North London with down-to-earth haunts. We’re talking punk-rock pubs, indie cinemas (The Lexi is one of London’s best) and celeb-friendly bar Paradise by way of Kensal Green – a great choice for either a Sunday roast or a late-night boho knees-up.

Hip Hackney Wick, known reverentially as the Wick, is Hackney’s slightly artier sister. The action takes place in a burgeoning collection of warehouses along Regent’s Canal and the Olympic Park site. Within the past decade or so, craft breweries have muscled in alongside art galleries, club spaces and restaurants. Watch the barges chug up and down the canal while sipping an East London distilled gin on a summer’s day – you can’t beat it.