48 Hours in Charlton: How to Do London Properly

HOW TO DO LONDON PROPERLY, STARTING FROM THE ANTIGALLICAN | NESTOR STAY | 6 MIN READ

SE7 A two-day itinerary based in SE7 — built around the neighbourhood’s considerable, and consistently underrated, advantages.

The case for staying in Charlton rather than somewhere more obvious has never been more straightforward. You are one minute from a station with direct trains to London Bridge in fifteen minutes. You are twenty minutes’ walk from a UNESCO World Heritage Site built by Christopher Wren. The O2 is five minutes by car. The Antigallican — a Victorian pub conversion with a working bar on the ground floor, a communal kitchen, and adults-only studios on Woolwich Road — is the kind of base that makes the case for southeast London more persuasively than any amount of marketing copy could. What follows is how to use two days of it properly.

DAY ONE

MORNING: A DRINK DOWNSTAIRS, THEN LONDON BRIDGE

The morning begins on the ground floor of the building you slept in. The Victorian bar at The Antigallican — in some form, serving this corner of Charlton since the 19th century — opens in the morning. Have a coffee, look at the room, and consider why the building carries the name it does. You are inside a piece of London history before you’ve left for the day. Walk to Charlton station — one minute on foot — for the direct train to London Bridge, approximately fifteen minutes.

LATE MORNING: BOROUGH MARKET & BANKSIDE

From London Bridge, walk west along the Bankside riverside path. Borough Market is immediately adjacent to the station — on a weekday morning before the lunch crowds multiply, the cheese, bread, and charcuterie traders open from 10am. From there, the riverside path runs west to Tate Modern, twenty minutes on foot past the Globe Theatre reconstruction. Free, no booking required: the Turbine Hall and the permanent collection (Rothko, Bacon, Bourgeois, Picasso) are the reasons most people come.

AFTERNOON: BERMONDSEY STREET OR THE SOUTH BANK

From the Tate, turn south into Bermondsey. The White Cube gallery on Bermondsey Street is free and programmes solo exhibitions by internationally significant artists. Alternatively, stay on the South Bank and walk east past the Oxo Tower, the National Theatre, and the BFI Southbank to Waterloo — two miles of riverside that remains engaging regardless of how many times you’ve done it.

EVENING: RETURN TO CHARLTON, DINNER ON TRAFALGAR ROAD

Charing Cross train direct to Charlton: approximately twenty minutes. For something genuinely excellent: Mountain View on Trafalgar Road — a Nepalese restaurant considerably more ambitious than its room suggests. For something easier: Wandercrust Pizza at The Pelton Arms, a Neapolitan pizzeria inside a comfortable old-fashioned pub, and a walk-in option on weeknights.

DAY TWO

MORNING: GREENWICH — THE PAINTED HALL & THE PARK

Walk to Charlton station, one stop to Maze Hill, or walk the twenty minutes through Charlton village and past Charlton House. Begin at the Old Royal Naval College: the Painted Hall, James Thornhill’s interior that took nineteen years to complete, is one of the great painted rooms in Europe and almost entirely overlooked by visitors heading straight for the Observatory. Entry is free. From there, walk through the grounds to Greenwich Park and up the hill to the Royal Observatory — the view from the top takes in Canary Wharf, St Paul’s, the Gherkin, and on a clear day the North Downs.

LATE MORNING: GREENWICH MARKET

Lunch at the market. Greenwich Market’s indoor food stalls are the right midday option — Addis Taste for Ethiopian injera and berberespiced vegetables is the standout. La Salumeria on Trafalgar Road, a twenty-year-old Italian deli, is the alternative for a toasted sandwich at a price that embarrasses everything around it.

AFTERNOON: THE CUTTY SARK & CHARLTON HOUSE

Walk to the Cutty Sark — the last surviving tea clipper, launched 1869, suspended in a glass enclosure on the riverside plaza. Ticketed interior; free exterior and plaza, with a view east along the Thames that accumulates detail the longer you look. Walk back towards Charlton, stopping at Charlton House — the Jacobean manor built in 1612, now a community centre, with Frilly’s café inside for a coffee before the last stretch home.

EVENING: END AT THE ANTIGALLICAN

Return to The Antigallican. The bar is the natural conclusion: a Victorian pub in a Victorian building at the end of two days covering Borough, Bankside, Greenwich, the Painted Hall, the Observatory, and a Jacobean manor — a range of London that most guests in zone one would need considerably more effort to achieve. The bar has been here since before any of the things you saw today were photographed.

The Antigallican is fifteen minutes from London Bridge by direct train, twenty from Greenwich on foot, and five from The O2 by car. Victorian studios in SE7, one minute from Charlton station. Adults only, 18+.