Living in Stockwell

Stockwell is mostly passed through rather than talked about, which is exactly why it is worth a look. The station is an interchange for both the Victoria and Northern lines, so from one stop you can be in the West End, at King's Cross or in the City without changing, and Brixton, Clapham and Vauxhall are each a short walk or a single stop away.

The area has one of London's largest Portuguese-speaking communities, concentrated along South Lambeth Road towards Vauxhall, and the cafés, bakeries and grocers there are its most distinctive feature. Away from the main roads, the Stockwell Park conservation area holds handsome early-Victorian villas and squares that surprise people who only know the traffic junction at the station. Vincent van Gogh lodged on Hackford Road as a young man, and there are quiet streets like it all around.

Housing is a real mix: those conservation-area houses, mostly split into flats; Victorian terraces; and several large council estates, which make up a big share of the homes. That mix is why rents here often undercut Clapham and Kennington for similar travel times.

The trade-off is that Stockwell has no real centre. There is no high street to speak of, few restaurants that draw people in, and the big roads that meet at the station — Clapham Road, Stockwell Road, South Lambeth Road — are noisy and heavy with buses. Most residents treat it as a well-connected base and go elsewhere to eat and drink, and the few who stay for years usually do so for the conservation-area streets, where a quiet square can sit two minutes from the station crowds.