A Camden Market Valentine’s card starts a London shopping trip that ends with Champagne and chocolate. In this Roberts London archive film, first published on 8 February 2015, Barry searches for a pop-up card before heading to St James’s, Piccadilly and Soho for gifts.
The shopping list is personal: a card worth keeping, lavender bath salts, a little Champagne and chocolates from a favourite shop. Getting the card is the part that takes some detective work.
Everything described here belongs to the original 2015 visit, including the stalls, shop locations, products and station arrangements. The film preserves a particular afternoon of London shopping before Valentine’s Day.
Finding a Camden Market Valentine’s card
The story begins with a Christmas card. During a previous visit to the Christmas market beside Tate Modern, Barry bought a pop-up design for his girlfriend. After the other cards went into the recycling, that one remained open on a dresser.
He remembers being told that more cards could be found at Camden Market. At the time, travelling across London just for a card seemed unlikely. Now, with Valentine’s Day approaching, it suddenly makes sense.
There is one problem: Camden is a sprawling collection of shops and stalls. A vague location is not much help when looking for one particular trader. Barry searches online before setting out and finds a page for Callis Cards, but the address information does not seem to fit.
A photograph offers a better clue. It shows a stall beneath a red-painted roof, which he thinks he recognises from the old warehouse buildings beside Camden Lock and the canal.
A red ceiling and a successful search
Inside the market, the red ceiling looks promising. Barry finds Callis Cards and chooses another pop-up card. The trader explains that the owner is away and that the Christmas card may actually have come from a competitor. Similar cards, it turns out, do not necessarily mean the same seller.
That uncertainty becomes part of the outing’s charm. The search succeeds in finding a card, even if the identity of the original Christmas stall remains unresolved.
Camden offers plenty of distractions on the way back. There are street performers, busy shops and food smells that make Barry wish he had more time to explore. However, the rest of the gift list is waiting in central London.
The journey continues through Camden Town station. In the film, Barry points out a queue and a sign giving ninety-six steps down to the platform. It is a brief reminder that even a simple shopping trip depends on the pace of the city around it.
Lavender bath salts at D.R. Harris
After travelling towards Green Park, Barry heads to D.R. Harris & Co. This is familiar territory: he explains that he buys his own soap and bathroom essentials there.
The gift this time is lavender bath salts. The film shows the Bury Street shop, which Barry describes as a temporary location while the main premises around the corner are refurbished. That explanation belongs to the 2015 visit.
It is a small, practical choice made with the recipient in mind. With the card and bath salts secured, the next stop takes the trip onto Piccadilly.
Fortnum & Mason’s Valentine’s displays
Fortnum & Mason has already proved useful on an earlier Valentine’s Day. Barry recalls buying a hamper the previous year and says it was well received. This time he looks through the seasonal displays before choosing a smaller Champagne gift.
The camera lingers over red packaging, hampers and bottles. Barry describes the shop as somewhere he returns to for gifts across different occasions, rather than only for Valentine’s Day.
His selection is a gift box with two little bottles of Champagne. He jokes about their size, correcting “bottles” to “glasses”. It is another modest addition to a present assembled over several stops, rather than one large purchase.
Chocolate at Paul A. Young in Soho
The final gift stop is Paul A. Young’s shop on Wardour Street. Barry says these are his girlfriend’s favourite chocolates in London. On the rare occasions she has shared one, he has enjoyed them too.
Inside, the camera moves across chocolates and Valentine’s gift boxes. Barry remarks on the smell of the shop, while the displays supply the final burst of colour in the afternoon’s shopping.
The trip closes after dark near the London Eye. Barry hopes the gifts will be enjoyed, leaving the film as a small record of the thought and travelling behind the finished present: Camden for the card, St James’s for bath salts, Piccadilly for Champagne and Soho for chocolate.
Watch the original London gift-shopping film
The full film follows the search through Camden and the later shop visits. For another archive outing around Piccadilly after dark, see Piccadilly Circus and Morada Brindisa in 2015.
Archive note: first published on YouTube on 8 February 2015. This article records that visit; products and arrangements shown belong to 2015.
