Review – Shopping in Croydon

Croydon is a “home town” of my husband. This is the reason we visit it almost every month. There are two shopping centres opposite each other on North End Street. Lots of shops are around that area. There is a card shop on Church Street as marked on the map which is the best saving for card shopping.


View Shopping Centres in Croydon in a larger map


The Whitgift Croydon:

1. Building Service Management and the layout of shops: 6/10
I got down to level one from Car Park using lift, which wasn’t a good experience for me. The room in the lift is too small. It can’t fit into more than 5-6 people. If with a little buggy it just doesn’t fit that comfortably.

I collected store directory from information stand on level one. It’s showing 100 shops on two floors without showing locations in the list of categories. It is not presenting sales offer or store’s information.

They placed management office and baby changing facilities on third floor. I personally think it is not making any convenient to customers who have babies.

(Management certainly haven’t delivered good support to visitors in the mall, they maybe just target their customers in the local area.)



2. Food and drinks: 7/10

The eating places are located on the first floor and second floor. There are over ten choices of Cafe and restaurants in store directory. (e.g. BB’s Coffee and Muffins, Subway, Starbuks)

3. Value for money: 8/10

Well, they have almost everything you need in your everyday live, and visitors could easily do all their shopping in one place.

Overall, The Whit gift is a good shopping centre for their local people. But they need to improve their building service management and the layout of shops.


Centrale Shopping Centre:

It’s located in the opposite of The Whitgift Centre across North End. It’s much more modem than the Whitgift centre.


1. Building Service Management and the layout of shops: 8/10

I collected store directory from information station on the Ground Floor. There are mall guide and travel guide available for visitors to check out the store location. There are 4 floors: Upper Mall, North end Mall, Lower mall and keeley road & Tamworth Road. We can find store location from store directory very easily. There are over 70 stores; most stores are from high street. (e.g. ZARA, French Connection, Jane Norman.) We could say this mall is designed for posh ladies.

2. Food and drinks: 9/10

The eating places are located in all possible level. They have Café Giardinon, Starbacks, and MCDONALD’s and other 4-5 food places.

3. Value for money: 8/10

This is a modern mall for people who love fashions and high street’s shopping.


In conclusion, the reasons that Croydon become a very popular shopping place in South East London. It’s because there are two shopping centres and lots of shops and markets around.

And you could discover some good stuff is a really save money in some of shops there.

One of the card shop is located on Church Street, I got two birthday cards only costs me 3 quid. Small saving here and there can make our life different.