Balham gets written off as the place you change trains. Spend an afternoon here properly and it turns out to be one of the easiest neighbourhoods in South London to spend a day in: everything worth doing is within about ten minutes of the station, and almost none of it is a chain.
Here is how we would spend it, from the people who work on the High Road.
Start on Hildreth Street
The pedestrianised stretch off the High Road is the heart of it: independent shops, food traders and flowers, with tables out whenever the weather allows. It is small enough to walk end to end in five minutes and good enough that you will not. Time it for late morning, when the traders are all out but the lunch queue has not started.
)
Photo: Colin Smith / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wander the High Road
Balham High Road is the backbone: bakeries, delis, wine shops, bike workshops and a run of independents that have survived precisely because the neighbourhood actually uses them. It rewards having no plan. Buy something you did not come for.
Make something (this is us)
Two minutes from Balham station, at 7 Station Parade, is our Balham studio, the only one of our five that does everything. You can paint a ready-made piece from a wall of 300+ ceramics, sit at the wheel for a beginner taster, or hand-build something from raw clay. Pieces start at £18, the studio fee is £7 per person, and paints, glazing and firing are all in.
)
If you would rather do it with a drink in hand, the Sip & Paint evenings are BYOB: 18+, cans only, two per person. And if the wheel is the bit that appeals, the six-week beginner course runs here as well as in Camden.
Round it off
The Exhibit on Balham Station Road is the local answer to "what now": bar, restaurant, cinema and comedy under one roof, which means an afternoon can turn into an evening without anyone having to make a decision on the pavement.
Getting here
)
Photo: Nick Cooper / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Balham has both the Northern line and National Rail, so it is quick from the City, Victoria and most of South London. We are a two-minute walk from the station on Station Parade, on Balham High Road.
Painting somewhere else in the city? We have three studios that do it. See pottery painting in London for all of them side by side.
