Alfies Antique Market

Here is a place to blindly lose oneself in a labyrinth of staircases and thresholds.

- DAVID ELLIS

Church Street, NW8

Amid clusters of antique clocks ticking in imperfect unison, hands pointing in different directions as if in disagreement over the time. Or, elsewhere, among trays of silver cutlery, polished to an ethereal shine. A place to stumble across serious watch dealers specialising in Longines and Omega and charging thousands for each; or stalls doing junk-store quartz timepieces from forgotten brands. Victorian postcards are neatly catalogued in one spot; elsewhere are kitsch Fifties bits-old diner signs, jukeboxes, that sort of thing.

We are in Church Street, which sits on the broad smudge of a border that fractions St John's Wood from Marylebone. It is a thoroughfare from Edgware Road to Lisson Grove, at one end cafés, carpet shops and places that promise everything for a pound, although almost nothing is. Here there is a daily street market, fresh fish sold next to clothes that must smell of them, fruit and veg, piles of plastic shoes.

At the other, at the Lisson Grove end, are windows filled with walnut desks, club chairs, lamps shaped like faraway animals. These are the antique shops, where a single purchase might come in at twice what it would cost to buy out all the stalls only a few metres away. It is a tale of two halves, Church Street.

In this half of the street is a building which has stood there since the 1880s: Alfies Antiques Market. It wasn't always Alfies: when it was built, it was called Jordan's and named for the family who owned it.