Leather Lane Market: Slow Horses filming location

Leather Lane in Slow Horses

Leather Lane supplies the street around Roddy Ho’s chicken-shop visit in Series 4, episode 1. Time Out’s interview with location manager Ian Pollington identifies the shop takeover and explains that the production changed its branding and adjusted the interior for filming. The location is real; the chicken-shop presentation belongs to the television production.

Confirmed: both Film London and the production interview name Leather Lane. The useful comparison is with the market street, its shopfronts and the tight relationship between businesses and pedestrians. Do not arrive expecting the fictional takeaway to remain in place. Walking the length of the lane gives a better sense of the setting than searching for a surviving prop or television sign.

The scene and the surrounding street

Roddy’s encounter with the explosion opens a series that pushes the team into another dangerous investigation. Leather Lane gives that opening an everyday setting: buying food and stepping outside becomes the threshold between routine and emergency. The Series 4 hub explains the wider story without revealing its ending, while the episode guide keeps the detailed recap behind a spoiler control.

The lane is worth visiting because its normal use is visible around the filming connection. Market traders, cafés and people on lunch breaks create a very different street from a deserted set. Look along the lane as well as across it. The line of stalls and shop entrances helps you understand the confined space in which a production has to place cameras, performers and pedestrians.

What is public

Leather Lane is a public street. You can walk its pavements and market route, browse stalls and photograph the wider streetscape without seeking access to a film set. Shops and cafés are individual businesses: entering to buy something follows their normal customer arrangements. There is no public tour of the redressed shop interior, and the screen branding is not a reliable guide to the business now occupying it.

Leave clear space at stall fronts and doorways, especially when pausing to compare a photograph. Market crowds can make a wide view difficult at lunchtime. If your priority is the street architecture, begin before the busiest food queues; if your priority is the market itself, accept that the scene will include the people who use it every working day.

Farringdon station · 5 min walk

Leave Farringdon by the Cowcross Street side and head west towards Farringdon Road. Cross using the pedestrian crossing, continue west on the Clerkenwell Road approach, then turn left into the northern end of Leather Lane. Allow about five minutes to reach the market street. Continue south on the lane if you want to see its cafés and the approach towards High Holborn.

Chancery Lane is another practical station. From its High Holborn exits, walk east along High Holborn and turn left into Leather Lane. Allow about four minutes to the southern entrance of the street. The two approaches work well for a through-walk: arrive at one end, explore the market and leave by the other instead of retracing the whole route.

Accessibility

Use Farringdon for a step-free station option and check the lift route for the train you intend to take. Chancery Lane should not be treated as a step-free alternative. The street route involves crossings and ordinary kerbs; stalls and food queues can narrow the usable space. A quieter morning visit is easier to plan than the peak lunch period if you need room to manoeuvre.

Keep the route on the pavement and use formal crossings over Farringdon Road. Wet weather affects both footing and the amount of covered space available while waiting for food. The market is outdoors, so a short café break can be a useful part of the plan rather than something added only when the weather changes.

Market hours and a coffee stop

Checked on 12 October 2026: Camden Council lists Leather Lane as a Monday-to-Friday market, mostly active between 10am and 4pm. Traders may operate within a wider permitted window, and their working hours depend on weather. For a visitor, late morning through lunch is the useful market period; the public street can still be walked when trading has finished.

Prufrock Coffee is at 23–25 Leather Lane. Its own website confirms the address, so you can build coffee into the street walk without taking a separate neighbourhood detour. Stop there before heading back towards Farringdon or continue south to High Holborn. Check the café’s current hours separately from the council’s market schedule because the two are different operations.

Combine the visit

Walk east towards Farringdon and Smithfield for the St John Street rear setting, then continue through Charterhouse Square towards Aldersgate Street. This creates a useful sequence from Series 4’s opening street to the office exteriors. Follow the walking routes for a longer outing, allowing time to eat rather than rushing between locations.

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