More than 160 Southfields households will turn their front gardens into stalls on the weekend of 19 and 20 September, when the area’s yard sale trail returns for a second year.
It is a car boot sale without the car boot. Sellers set up on their own driveways, paths and lawns, buyers walk the streets between them, and neighbours without a front garden can take a pitch at one of two satellite sites: the lawn at St Barnabas, and the car park at St Michael’s, which is open on the Saturday only. Both days run from 11am to 5pm.
The council funded the first one. That trail, held over the weekend of 6 and 7 September last year, was among 37 projects paid for through Wandsworth’s climate action microgrants, which award between £100 and £500 to local green schemes, and the council named it in a press release as one of the scheme’s successes.
Under the new Conservative administration however those grants have been put in pause pending the outcome of a spending review, which set out its first round of cuts in July. Writing in the Southfields Grid Residents’ Association newsletter this summer, organiser Gwendolyn Aker said the grant had been “indefinitely suspended” pending a financial review, and asked local businesses to help raise the £500 the trail needs to cover its costs.
The event website now credits one sponsor, the estate agent Winkworth Southfields. Aker told Putney.news that local sponsors had covered what she called the bare bones.
The council still lists the trail among its own green events. Its Sustainable September programme, published on 28 July, names the Southfields Yard Sale Trail alongside repair cafes, harvest festivals, nature walks and a bat walk on Tooting Common.
Last year’s trail was not only households. The local scout troop took a pitch, as did the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women’s Association from the Fazl Mosque, and one stall raised more than £150 for Oxfam. Southfields Harvest ran cider pressing and Recycle More Southfields ran recycling games.
Sellers can sign up now. A new trail map is due on 1 September.
How to take part
Sellers register through a form on the trail’s website at yardsaletrail.london, which also carries the map and the rules on what can and cannot be sold. Buyers need nothing: the trail is free and there is no ticket.
Organisers are also looking for volunteer community stewards to help run the satellite sites for a few hours, for community groups who want to host a booth, for further satellite locations, and for sponsors. The contact address is yardsaletrailsouthfields@gmail.com.
