Candy Shop Near Me in Eltham: Mr Simms and Its Wall of Jars

Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe at 81 Eltham High Street is a traditional jar-and-counter sweet shop, the kind where the stock sits in glass jars on the wall behind the till. On the brand's own online shop, 200g of rhubarb and custards costs £3.60. For a candy shop near me search in south-east London, it is the obvious stop on the high street.

Mr Simms is a chain, but an unusual one. The brand was started by Martin Peet, who describes himself as a third-generation confectioner from a family that has been in the sweet trade since 1891. The first Mr Simms opened in Leek, Staffordshire, in September 2004, and the business is now run from Stafford, with shops across the country operated as franchises. The Eltham shop is one of several in Greater London.

The franchise model explains the feel. Each shop follows the same look, with dark wood, jars and a counter, but it is run locally, so the person serving you is usually someone from the area rather than head office staff. The company's own history page says the aim is to keep the theatre of the traditional British sweet shop alive, from the jars to the counter, and that is a fair summary of what you walk into on the High Street.

Start with the British classics. Rhubarb and custards, the hard boiled sweets that are half pink and half yellow, cost £3.60 for 200g on the online shop, and so do mint humbugs, the striped brown-and-cream mints that give old sweet shops their smell. These are the sweets older customers ask for by name, and they are a good way to show visiting friends what a British sweet shop actually sells.

Pick and mix is the other draw. The online shop sells a build-your-own 500g bag for £7.49, which gives a sense of how far your money goes. In store the shop is a franchise, so prices can differ slightly from the website, but the format is the same: you choose, the bag is weighed, and you pay for the weight. Choosing mixed sizes is the trick, because heavy chocolate pieces fill a bag fast.

Mr Simms has its own sour line, and its most notorious product is Black Death Ultra Sour, £4.50 for 100g online. These are very sharp sweets designed to be a challenge, and they are popular with teenagers filming each other trying them. My honest view: buy one small bag to share and skip it as a main purchase. Most people manage two or three before reaching for something milder.

In October the brand pushes its Halloween range, and the website features it now. Expect seasonal pick and mix and novelty sweets in the run-up to 31 October, which makes the shop busy after school on weekdays and on Saturdays. If you are buying for a Halloween party, go on a weekday morning, when the jars are full and there is no queue of children deciding between sherbet and sours.

There is also a thrifty option. The Eltham shop sells surplus pick and mix bags through the Too Good To Go app, where shops list leftover stock at a reduced price for collection at a set time. You do not choose the contents, but it is a cheap way to try a mix. Reserve in the app before you travel, because the bags are limited and tend to sell early.

Getting to the shop from central London is straightforward. Trains run to Eltham station from London Bridge and Charing Cross, and the High Street is a short walk from the station. Several bus routes run along the High Street itself. Coming by car is harder on Saturdays, when parking near the shops fills up, so the train is the easier choice for a weekend sweet run.

After school, the counter is mostly children with pocket money and parents waiting by the door. Late morning brings older Eltham residents buying a quarter of their usual mints, a habit the jar format is built around. On Saturdays you see families who have come up for the shops along the High Street. The unspoken rule is simple: know roughly what you want before you reach the front.

The best walk from the shop is south to Eltham Palace and Gardens, about ten to fifteen minutes on foot. Run by English Heritage, it combines the remains of a medieval royal palace, including its great hall, with an Art Deco house built in the 1930s for the Courtauld family. It charges for entry and has its own opening days, so plan the visit separately from the sweet shop.

North of the High Street, Well Hall Pleasaunce is a free park with gardens, a moat and a Tudor barn. The writer Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, once lived at Well Hall, and the park is a pleasant place to sit with a paper bag of sweets. Together with the palace it turns a quick sweet shop visit into an afternoon out in Eltham.

Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe, 81 Eltham High Street, Eltham, London SE9 1TD. The official store locator lists the shop as open seven days a week. The nearest station is Eltham, on the National Rail line from London Bridge and Charing Cross; there is no Tube. Prices quoted are from mrsimms.co in October 2026 and may differ slightly in the shop. Surplus bags are on Too Good To Go.