London is an expensive city. Increasingly so. But there remain a wealth of activities to suit lower budgets, from watching a Shakespeare play at the world-famous Globe Theatre to going to see a football match on a Saturday.
From incredible Chinese crepes in Chinatown, to comedy in a crypt (sort of), here are 10 things to do in town without breaking the bank.
The Top Secret Comedy Club
Top Secret Comedy Club
The Top Secret Comedy Club on Drury Lane has long been a place for up-and-coming acts to hone their craft, though don’t be surprised if a bigger name appears, as they have been known to pop-up. Either way, the venue is huge fun, well located for a dose of crepuscular debauchery before heading to a West End pub, or home to unwind. Tickets midweek are usually under a fiver and are almost always sub-£10.
Cable Cafe press handout
The Cable Cafe is a gem of a place in Brixton, a follow-up to Waterloo’s famed Scooter Cafe that offers much the same nourishment, hospitality folded neatly with succour. It’s a space for coffee that isn’t £4 a cup, somewhere to work during the day, network, and be a part of a wider community of bright young things. Artists come here to have a simple sandwich or a slice of ginger cake; writers pass the time in corners. And on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, there is free live jazz to enjoy.
The mighty Dulwich Hamlet were long the team to watch for under a tenner, but they’ve become too popular and successful in recent years and so now tickets are £13-a-pop. Still go, but there’s a wealth of other lower league clubs out there to get your matchday fix. Try Walthamstow FC, where prices are about £8 a fixture, or Croydon Athletic — owned by Stormzy, Palace legend Wilf Zaha and the club’s head of care Danny Young — where adults can go for £7. Sure, the standard of football isn’t the best, but it’s not bad either.
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Helen Murray
Just as it should be, and it was when the Bard still had quill in hand, Shakespeare’s Globe offers affordable prices. Standing tickets still start from just £5. The only thing to note is stamina, given performances are often long, and that the balustrade stands at about four feet, so children are mostly unable to see anything. But for many, it’s a way of seeing everything from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to The Tempest, put on by great actors for bus fare money.
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White Cube is a free-to-visit arts space which lends itself particularly well to larger format works, with the likes of Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin making regular exhibition features. There’s always a host of things to see here, with an emphasis on new, emerging talent as well as established names. It’s a point of pride that London is awash with free art — there could be any number of galleries listed here. This one is just a particular favourite.
Slips for a fiver are also still available at the Royal Opera House. In a venue where most tickets start at £75 and quickly escalate upwards of £200, the notion of spending just £4 or £5 to see a production seems laughable, but each day for most performances, punters can book a standing ticket, adopt a gentle leaning position and watch some of the finest ballet and opera that Europe has to offer.
The Old Operating Theatre
The Old Operating Theatre is Europe’s oldest surviving surgical theatre and located in the attic of St Thomas’ Church (part of the original St Thomas’ Hospital) in Southwark. It offers a morbid insight into 19th-century medicine before anaesthetics and antiseptics, where rapid, often gruesome surgeries were performed using what have become painfully primitive tools. Now a museum, it features the original wooden theatre and herb garret (used for storing medicinal herbs) and displays old equipment, processes and paraphernalia. Tickets are just £10.
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Pocketed on a quiet street in Holborn, off the main drag, is the Novelty Automation Museum, now ten years in the making. It’s a place blissfully devoid of modern tech, instead an old-time arcade redolent of the gaming halls of a tired seaside town. What awaits is a dizzying and curious collection of satirical machines, each one — bar a couple made by guest engineers — created by the Suffolk-based inventor and cartoonist Tim Hunkin. Each one is usable, either by levers, buttons, or pulleys, and £10 would get you enough tokens to while away a good hour.
Chinatown heaves with secrets, but this, though it’s been here for years, may be among its best. It specialises in street food, serving freshly fried Chinese crepes (called jianbing) from about £6 a portion. Toppings, such as sausage, pork belly, and enoki mushrooms, will each add on a little cost, but you’d be hard-pressed to push much beyond a tenner. The pancakes are generous with spicy chilli oil, too, each one as crisp and crunchy as it is spicy and sticky.
Daniel Lynch
Rowan’s tenpin bowling alley still charges just £1 for entry, while a round costs between £8-10 per person depending on the time of day (more in the evening). It’s a tremendously low-cost night out, perfect for groups, and while adding food and drink to the mix will push costs up, it’s never going to break the bank. This is a legendary London locale — and in the spotlight again given concerns over development plans. Long may Rowan’s live.