Covered arcades open off Electric Avenue, and Windrush Square still has its domed 1911 cinema.
What Brixton looks like
is a narrow market street of Victorian shopfronts, striped awnings covering stalls down one side and a curved corner pharmacy at its western end. Three covered arcades open off the surrounding streets, Reliance Arcade, Market Row and Brixton Village. Their curved glass roofs run on steel and iron trusses above narrow indoor aisles, lined with market stalls and small shopfronts lit by paper lanterns strung overhead. Reliance Arcade's own shopfront is done in an Egyptian style, with painted columns and lettering dating from the 1920s.
The on Windrush Square is red brick, with cream domed corners over the entrance and a lit marquee sign, dating from 1911. The O2 Academy on Stockwell Road is a domed cinema dating from 1929, its ceiling scattered with artificial stars. It runs today as a concert venue.
Windrush Square is a paved pedestrian square fronted by Lambeth Town Hall's clock tower, the Ritzy and the Tate Library. on Brixton Road is one of the country's first purpose built department stores, dating from 1877, built on an early steel frame.
East along Coldharbour Lane, Southwyck House is a seven storey Brutalist block in dark brick. Its concrete banding steps in a zigzag the length of the building, dating from 1981. Small windows are set into each fold of the zigzag, with a run of grass and a traffic island in front of the block.
Shot in Brixton
The 1980 film Babylon shot its best known Brixton scene on Atlantic Road, right under the railway bridge next to Electric Avenue. In 2013 a set was built on Padfield Road for the film The Man from U.N.C.L.E., transforming the street into 1960s Berlin. The ITV series Marcella filmed bakery scenes at a restaurant on Electric Avenue and used Brixton Underground station. School scenes for the same series were shot at Evelyn Grace Academy on Loughborough Park. The film Kill Your Friends used Brixton's Hobgoblin pub for a pub scene.
A Brixton Tale, 2021
A Brixton Tale was shot around Southwyck House, known locally as the Barrier Block. Filming also took place on the wider Somerleyton Estate around it. The block's zigzag concrete balconies date from 1981, stepping the length of a seven storey dark brick block. Street View
What Brixton can double for
Halifax Borough Market in Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax's Borough Market has the same curved glass and wrought iron roof over narrow shopping aisles as Market Row and Brixton Village, even though Halifax's own market is Victorian, built in the 1890s against Brixton's 1920s and 1930s. Stallholders' units line the aisles under the glazing exactly as they do in Brixton's arcades. Halifax's own market rises to an ornate central lantern and four storey stone frontages Brixton's arcades don't have, so keep to shots inside the aisles rather than pulling back to the exterior. Try searching curved glass roof now.
Leadenhall Market's own cast iron roof structure and covered aisles are close in form to Brixton's arcades, both built as covered shopping streets under glass. Leadenhall's ironwork is painted green, maroon and cream over a cobbled floor, a much more ornate treatment than the plainer arcades on Electric Avenue. Keep the ornate paintwork and the cobbles out of frame, since neither appears in Brixton's arcades. A tighter shot on the plain ironwork and shopfronts holds better than a wide view of the market hall. Try searching painted ironwork cobbled floor now.
Park Hill in Sheffield is the same scale of raw concrete Brutalist megastructure as Southwyck House, with long unbroken runs of flats and repeating window bays rising four to thirteen storeys. Its own access decks doubled for Belfast's Divis Flats in the 2014 film '71, proof that this kind of Brutalist estate has stood in for another city on screen before. Park Hill's decks run in open walkways along the front of the block, wide enough for a milk float. Southwyck House's zigzag concrete banding has no open deck and steps forward and back instead, so match the building era in wide shots rather than the access pattern. Try searching raw concrete Brutalist megastructure now.
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