Hotels in Liverpool Street

Geographically separating the City of London financial centre from east London’s grittiness and up-and-coming cool, Liverpool Street is one of the major commuter hotspots in the city.

The station is frantic, with overground services to the East of England and the suburbs of Essex and Hertfordshire and Central, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City Line Underground trains ferrying folk around the capital.

A nice hotel near to Liverpool Street Station is the Crowne Plaza St Gregory Hotel. 

Unless you’re on the daily rat race there’s three very good reasons to visit Liverpool Street: Spitalfields Market, the east-side fashion parade that is Shoreditch night life, and the cultural and culinary banquet that is Brick Lane.

Spitalfields (www.visitspitalfields.com) is buzzing, particularly on Sundays, the main day: a covered indoor street market with hundreds of small traders selling their own jewellery, art, craft-work and fashions, side-by-side with larger boutique fashion labels and ethically-sound eateries like Giraffe.

There’s excellent tapas bars, cafes and pubs around the market, and you’re halfway to Brick Lane – one of London’s massive multi-cultural success stories.

The main road of the local Bangladeshi community is now a novel, Hollywood movie, culinary landmark and by-word for east London cool – sitars and calls to prayer soundtrack a heady creative excitement, thick with even headier aromas from the wall-to-wall restaurants in-between Banksy graffiti and cool, music-focused bars.

Eating on Brick Lane is an absolute treat, with superb Indian cuisine available everywhere and clubs like 93 Feet East (150 Brick Lane, 020 7247 3293) and the Big Chill Bar (91 Brick Lane, 020 7392 9180) keep the party moving until late.

Shoreditch, a short hike from Liverpool Street is where east London found its loft-living, outlandishly fashionable, artistic vibe a decade ago, and the bars around here are uniformly achingly cool, high-tempo and cutting-edge – it’s a nightlife hotspot.