Living in Lambeth

You've made up your mind that you’re going to start or continue your teaching career in Lambeth.

Elsewhere on this website you'll have found information on why Lambeth is such a great choice as the place to be a teacher, but now we're going to concentrate on why Lambeth is just a great place to live.

Alright, so you might decide that actually finding a place to live within the borough of Lambeth could stretch your budget too far (although we look at that in the housing in Lambeth section here and it needn’t be as expensive as you might think), but, even if that is the case, you’ll end up living somewhere nearby with a short commute (hopefully) and you'll be in the borough five days a week looking to get the most out of what it has to offer on many evenings and weekends.

And the range of what's on offer in Lambeth is truly breathtaking in this cosmopolitan culture-packed borough.

The whole area is tailor-made for young professionals and workers new to the city ready to make the most of what's on offer.

For the cultural highlights check out the directory on our Lambeth culture page here.


London’s Best Vibes

The first thing to appreciate about living in Lambeth is that it has all of the vibe of central London and the pace of life of the metropolis but, unlike so many other areas, it is not overrun with tourists.

At the same time, it's just a short walk over Waterloo or Westminster Bridge to reach those tourist centres of central London including the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden and the West End.

Indeed, that is one of the joys of this area, a riverside walk that finishes up at London’s South Bank cultural hub with street food, music, skaters and a host of world-class events in some of the world's leading theatres.

If walking is too much for you, it's only ever a very short distance to one of the area’s outstanding transport links, whether that's the main line station at Waterloo (or Victoria just over the river in neighbouring Westminster) or the numerous tube lines and buses that serve the area.

Lambeth has a deserved reputation for an eclectic mix of landmarks, open spaces, cultural high points, markets, pubs and wine bars and buzzing arts facilities and is especially noted for world-class nightlife at some of London's premier and legendary venues.

The relative youthfulness of the borough encourages a dynamic lifestyle which is only amplified by the cosmopolitan and global nature of so many of the local residents and businesses.


Eating Out in Lambeth

No matter how eclectic your taste in food, Lambeth has you covered with everything from wine bars along the Southbank to regional African restaurants dotted right across the borough - and every cuisine in between.

You can eat your way right around the world in the space of Lambeth’s few square miles, and there are meals to suit the pockets of paupers or the tastes of kings (and even those that teachers can afford!).

Lambeth is especially great for incredible street food with food start-ups (alongside social enterprise businesses) at Pop Brixton and stalls all along the South Bank as well as just over the Southwark border at the Mercato Metropolitano and the world famous Borough Market. You’ll also run across any number of pop-ups and food markets in every part of Lambeth with people coming from all over to hang out and eat at places such as Brixton Village and Vauxhall Street Food market.

You're also spoilt for choice with an endless selection of your usual High Street cafes and restaurants, little local specialist eateries and plenty of places for special occasions.


Lambeth Nightlife

After dark, Lambeth really comes alive with its youthful population working in the borough, students and local resident community making a beeline for the bars and clubs right across the borough with choices stretching from the bars along the South Bank and around Waterloo to revamped neighbourhood pubs all through Brixton, Clapham, Stockwell and beyond.

Lambeth nightlife often finishes up with some of London's best late night entertainment at legendary venues such as Brixton Academy,  the Electric, and a host of smaller arts venues such as Corsica Studios plus some of London’s best smaller clubs including The Lightbox and Fire, to name just a few.

Given that your night out in Lambeth can start with a drink in a rooftop bar with a view, involve drinking wine and grabbing a bite in a revamped underground public loo, taking in London’s iconic LGBT nightspot the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and ending up at any one of the area’s renowned clubs, you’ll have little need to venture out of the borough!


Out and About in Lambeth

When you do feel like a breath of fresh air, Lambeth won’t let you down either.

Lambeth parks are amongst the best in the country, with eleven green flags amongst the more than 60 green spaces in the borough, and provide children’s clubs and playgrounds, sports pitches and cafes. They are also great venues for cultural events including several stand out music festivals in the heart of the borough.

The parks range from the larger Streatham Common, Clapham Common and Brockwell Park (with its 50m Olympic art deco outdoor pool at Brockwell Lido) to the smaller Jubilee Gardens by the London Eye and the community street garden of Van Gogh Walk and many more besides.

You’ll find a range of facilities and events taking place all year round in Lambeth’s open spaces and that’s without counting the range of walks and nooks and crannies that you can find on the river that forms the borough’s Northern boundary.

If you’re looking to the outdoors for some of your fitness you’ll find plenty on offer. Park Run has official events at Brockwell Park and Clapham Common as well as other club style events at some of the other parks. These are a great way to keep fit but also a fantastic way to meet new people when you’re new to the area and get out and see what the parks have to offer.

And there’s a lot!

Across Lambeth the council run parks offer a wide variety of sporting facilities including pitches for football and cricket, all weather astro pitches for 5-a-side, sand filled astro for football and hockey, hard courts for tennis, basketball and netball plus multi use game areas for multi sports.

If you prefer to stay fit indoors you’ll find the full range of high street gym brands so that one will be pretty much on your doorstep and the council also has a range of sports centres, many with swimming pools.

As you’d expect as a corner of the London metropolis you’ll also find endless specialist fitness options from hot yoga, martial arts , crossfit and pretty much anything you could want.


Shopping in Lambeth

When it comes to loading up with everyday essentials Lambeth couldn’t be any easier.

You’ll find every supermarket brand represented throughout the borough and the multicultural nature of the population means you’ll also find world food stores everywhere too. So if your lifestyle requires adventurous globally inspired home cooking you’ll find all those hard to find ingredients aren’t a problem in Lambeth!

To put the clothes on your back and shop for treats, let’s face it, you might well hop on the Tube and head up West to the world’s best range of shops from department stores to boutiques along Oxford Street, Covent Garden or head out to East or West to the mega shopping centres and the posh shopping streets. From Lambeth it takes 15 minutes to be on Oxford Street ready to shop!

Back in the borough you’ll find a great range of high street and specialist boutiques and stores on all the main thoroughfares in Brixton, Clapham and beyond.


Culture in Lambeth

We’ve already pointed out some of the cultural gems that you’ll find in Lambeth, but there’s so many that we’ve put together a directory that covers some of the more well-known ones.

Click through and take a look at those here:

Obviously you have all of the cultural highpoints that the whole of London has to offer right on your doorstep for you to enjoy when you’re not working and just being a ‘culture vulture’ but, of course, you can also use these amazing resources as part of your teaching .

It can’t be argued that anywhere in the country can compete with London when it comes to offering limitless teaching opportunities where you can take your pupils, ranging from Shakespeare in the recreated and authentic Globe Theatre to any number of specialist collections in the capital’s myriad of museums.

That’s amazing to have as a resource (and for your own enjoyment) but Lambeth itself is a hub of amazing cultural highlights.

Most of these are listed here, but it’s true to say that Lambeth is one of the capital’s cultural hubs with an excellent assortment of theatres, galleries and historic sites as well as museums, film venues and much more.

Whether you like high brow, mainstream or plain quirky, Lambeth will have something for you.

Living in Lambeth truly has it all.

You've made up your mind that you’re going to start or continue your teaching career in Lambeth.

Elsewhere on this website you'll have found information on why Lambeth is such a great choice as the place to be a teacher, but now we're going to concentrate on why Lambeth is just a great place to live.

Alright, so you might decide that actually finding a place to live within the borough of Lambeth could stretch your budget too far (although we look at that in the housing in Lambeth section here and it needn’t be as expensive as you might think), but, even if that is the case, you’ll end up living somewhere nearby with a short commute (hopefully) and you'll be in the borough five days a week looking to get the most out of what it has to offer on many evenings and weekends.

And the range of what's on offer in Lambeth is truly breathtaking in this cosmopolitan culture-packed borough.

The whole area is tailor-made for young professionals and workers new to the city ready to make the most of what's on offer.

For the cultural highlights check out the directory on our Lambeth culture page here.


London’s best vibes

The first thing to appreciate about living in Lambeth is that it has all of the vibe of central London and the pace of life of the metropolis but, unlike so many other areas, it is not overrun with tourists.

At the same time, it's just a short walk over Waterloo or Westminster Bridge to reach those tourist centres of central London including the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden and the West End.

Indeed, that is one of the joys of this area, a riverside walk that finishes up at London’s South Bank cultural hub with street food, music, skaters and a host of world-class events in some of the world's leading theatres.

If walking is too much for you, it's only ever a very short distance to one of the area’s outstanding transport links, whether that's the main line station at Waterloo (or Victoria just over the river in neighbouring Westminster) or the numerous tube lines and buses that serve the area.

Lambeth has a deserved reputation for an eclectic mix of landmarks, open spaces, cultural high points, markets, pubs and wine bars and buzzing arts facilities and is especially noted for world-class nightlife at some of London's premier and legendary venues.

The relative youthfulness of the borough encourages a dynamic lifestyle which is only amplified by the cosmopolitan and global nature of so many of the local residents and businesses.


Eating Out in Lambeth

No matter how eclectic your taste in food, Lambeth has you covered with everything from wine bars along the Southbank to regional African restaurants dotted right across the borough - and every cuisine in between.

You can eat your way right around the world in the space of Lambeth’s few square miles, and there are meals to suit the pockets of paupers or the tastes of kings (and even those that teachers can afford!).

Lambeth is especially great for incredible street food with food start-ups (alongside social enterprise businesses) at Pop Brixton and stalls all along the South Bank as well as just over the Southwark border at the Mercato Metropolitano and the world famous Borough Market. You’ll also run across any number of pop-ups and food markets in every part of Lambeth with people coming from all over to hang out and eat at places such as Brixton Village and Vauxhall Street Food market.

You're also spoilt for choice with an endless selection of your usual High Street cafes and restaurants, little local specialist eateries and plenty of places for special occasions.


Lambeth Nightlife

After dark, Lambeth really comes alive with its youthful population working in the borough, students and local resident community making a beeline for the bars and clubs right across the borough with choices stretching from the bars along the South Bank and around Waterloo to revamped neighbourhood pubs all through Brixton, Clapham, Stockwell and beyond.

Lambeth nightlife often finishes up with some of London's best late night entertainment at legendary venues such as Brixton Academy,  the Electric, and a host of smaller arts venues such as Corsica Studios plus some of London’s best smaller clubs including The Lightbox and Fire, to name just a few.

Given that your night out in Lambeth can start with a drink in a rooftop bar with a view, involve drinking wine and grabbing a bite in a revamped underground public loo, taking in London’s iconic LGBT nightspot the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and ending up at any one of the area’s renowned clubs, you’ll have little need to venture out of the borough!


Out and About in Lambeth

When you do feel like a breath of fresh air, Lambeth won’t let you down either.

Lambeth parks are amongst the best in the country, with eleven green flags amongst the more than 60 green spaces in the borough, and provide children’s clubs and playgrounds, sports pitches and cafes. They are also great venues for cultural events including several stand out music festivals in the heart of the borough.

The parks range from the larger Streatham Common, Clapham Common and Brockwell Park (with its 50m Olympic art deco outdoor pool at Brockwell Lido) to the smaller Jubilee Gardens by the London Eye and the community street garden of Van Gogh Walk and many more besides.

You’ll find a range of facilities and events taking place all year round in Lambeth’s open spaces and that’s without counting the range of walks and nooks and crannies that you can find on the river that forms the borough’s Northern boundary.

If you’re looking to the outdoors for some of your fitness you’ll find plenty on offer. Park Run has official events at Brockwell Park and Clapham Common as well as other club style events at some of the other parks. These are a great way to keep fit but also a fantastic way to meet new people when you’re new to the area and get out and see what the parks have to offer.

And there’s a lot!

Across Lambeth the council run parks offer a wide variety of sporting facilities including pitches for football and cricket, all weather astro pitches for 5-a-side, sand filled astro for football and hockey, hard courts for tennis, basketball and netball plus multi use game areas for multi sports.

If you prefer to stay fit indoors you’ll find the full range of high street gym brands so that one will be pretty much on your doorstep and the council also has a range of sports centres, many with swimming pools.

As you’d expect as a corner of the London metropolis you’ll also find endless specialist fitness options from hot yoga, martial arts , crossfit and pretty much anything you could want.


Shopping in Lambeth

When it comes to loading up with everyday essentials Lambeth couldn’t be any easier.

You’ll find every supermarket brand represented throughout the borough and the multicultural nature of the population means you’ll also find world food stores everywhere too. So if your lifestyle requires adventurous globally inspired home cooking you’ll find all those hard to find ingredients aren’t a problem in Lambeth!

To put the clothes on your back and shop for treats, let’s face it, you might well hop on the Tube and head up West to the world’s best range of shops from department stores to boutiques along Oxford Street, Covent Garden or head out to East or West to the mega shopping centres and the posh shopping streets. From Lambeth it takes 15 minutes to be on Oxford Street ready to shop!

Back in the borough you’ll find a great range of high street and specialist boutiques and stores on all the main thoroughfares in Brixton, Clapham and beyond.


Culture in Lambeth

We’ve already pointed out some of the cultural gems that you’ll find in Lambeth, but there’s so many that we’ve put together a directory that covers some of the more well-known ones.

Click through and take a look at those here:

Obviously you have all of the cultural highpoints that the whole of London has to offer right on your doorstep for you to enjoy when you’re not working and just being a ‘culture vulture’ but, of course, you can also use these amazing resources as part of your teaching .

It can’t be argued that anywhere in the country can compete with London when it comes to offering limitless teaching opportunities where you can take your pupils, ranging from Shakespeare in the recreated and authentic Globe Theatre to any number of specialist collections in the capital’s myriad of museums.

That’s amazing to have as a resource (and for your own enjoyment) but Lambeth itself is a hub of amazing cultural highlights.

Most of these are listed here, but it’s true to say that Lambeth is one of the capital’s cultural hubs with an excellent assortment of theatres, galleries and historic sites as well as museums, film venues and much more.

Whether you like high brow, mainstream or plain quirky, Lambeth will have something for you.

Living in Lambeth truly has it all.