Brighton Open Market: a tidy-up and a new lease of life

Brighton's Open Market has been a fixture of the London Road community since barrow traders first set up here in 1926, and it has spent the last few months quietly tidying itself up. The site, known to some as the Market Hall, sits on Marshall's Row, just off London Road and Ditchling Road, across from The Level, and it has spent the better part of 2026 getting its act together. The first real step came in March, when Hyde and Pinnacle Group gave the place a deep spring clean — steam-cleaning, treatment works and graffiti removal — and since then the improvements have kept coming: repainting, new murals, better signage and a redesigned Market Square with more seating and a new layout for pop-up stalls, all wrapped up by April. In May, the market turned itself into an 'Artists' Open House', with local artists showing their work every weekend.

What has really moved the needle, though, is behind the scenes. A refreshed website and a new booking app have pulled in more than 130 traders and nearly 500 stall bookings since January, which shows up on the floor in the mix you get. You can still pick up vintage clothing, jewellery, vinyl records and fresh produce, but the food side has grown noticeably: Tony's Pizza, an Italian eatery, and Lunch, a Vietnamese sandwich bar, are recent arrivals, and the wider line-up now runs through Greek, Mexican, Korean and traditional Bangladeshi snacks. The old guard is still there, too, with the butcher and the bakery that have long been part of the place.

It is worth a bit of history to understand what has been saved. The market traces back to the 1890s, when itinerant traders worked Bond Street and Gardner Street, and for years it sat in the central rose-walk of The Level before moving to Marshall's Row in 1926. The permanent retail market, with 42 stalls, was opened by the Duke of Norfolk on 7 January 1960. The version you see now came from a 2014 redevelopment that gave the market a covered hall with a double-height central square, 45 permanent stalls, 12 first-floor workshops and 87 affordable homes on Francis Street and Ditchling Road. It is owned by Brighton & Hove City Council and run by the Brighton Open Market Community Interest Company, a social enterprise set up in 2011, with Cllr Ty Goddard, a Brighton & Hove City Councillor and director of the CIC, overseeing the project.

Getting there is easy. The London Road car park is a two-minute walk away, there are bicycle racks near the Ditchling Road entrance and a long list of buses stop nearby, with Brighton's Main Rail Station and London Road Station both about ten minutes on foot. It opens seven days a week: 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm on Saturday with stalls from 10am, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday. Whether you come for the food or the stalls, it is a good example of a local market that has kept its character while actually getting better with age.