London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time. And shopping time.
Because today we’re going shopping.
Not Oxford Street shopping. Not Knightsbridge shopping. Not a department store. Nothing beige.
We’re going somewhere tiny, colourful, whimsical and completely individual.
Kensington Church Walk.
One of those little London passages that feels as though somebody has quietly slipped a bookmark into the city.
And there, tucked beside St Mary Abbots, is Fable and Mirth.
It’s a specialist gift shop. Though “gift shop” doesn’t really do it justice.
It’s a little cabinet of wonders. Handmade things. Beautiful things. Slightly eccentric things. Things with stories attached to them.
And behind it are two sisters, Neely and Sarita.
They’re Londoners now. Or Londoners in the making.
They come from Wolverhampton.
Which gives us our word of the day.
Wolverhampton.
And there’s a woman hiding inside that name.
We have to go back more than a thousand years. To the year 985.
The place was then known as Heantun. Pronounced HAY-ahn-toon. Old English. The high town. The high settlement.
And in 985 King Æthelred granted land there to a Mercian noblewoman called Wulfrun.
And what a name.
Wulf means wolf.
And rūn means secret, mystery, counsel. It’s the same old Germanic word that gives us our word rune.
So Wulfrun.
Wolf. Secret. Mystery.
There’s a name to conjure with.
A name out of a fable, almost.
Which, as it happens, is rather appropriate today.
Nine years later, in 994, Wulfrun endowed a religious community there.
And in time her name became attached to the place.
Wulfrun Heantun.
Say it. Roll it around a little.
Wulfrun Heantun.
And listen to what happens to it over a thousand years.
Wolverhampton.
So there she is. Wulfrun. A woman with a name made up of wolf and mystery, who left that name on an English city more than a thousand years ago.
And she’s still there.
Because people from Wolverhampton have a wonderful name.
They’re Wulfrunians.
Which means Neely and Sarita are Wulfrunians.
And today we’re going from one Wolverhampton woman to two.
Two young women who came south and are making their mark on another little patch of England.
A particularly lovely little patch of Kensington.
And appropriately enough, they’ve filled it with stories.
Fable and Mirth.
Let’s meet Neely and Sarita.
Okay, I’m in a wonderful spot. St. Mary Abbots, the parish church of Kensington. And I’m with Sarita and Neely, sisters. And they run the most wonderful little shop called Fable and Murth. It’s a gift shop, so who am I going to get to talk to? Who’s the big sister? I am. Neely. All right, Neely, tell me a little bit about you, Neely, first of all. Yeah, where do I start? So, yeah, my name is Neely. I’m the older sister. We are originally from the Midlands, from a city called Wolverhampton.
That’s where we were born and raised. I can’t hear a Wolverhampton accent here. You can’t? You can do it when you want. That makes me so happy, because when people hear the accent, it upsets me. I don’t know why. How long have you been in London? 15 years. 15 years, yeah. 15 years, and then I went back just after the pandemic, had a little break. My accent became thicker.
So, yeah, now I shouldn’t say it upsets me. That’s bad. And Neely, what brought you down here to start with? My previous business. I was a talent agency owner working with models. Really? Yes, I started that very, very young. And he bought me to London, and I lived and worked in the West End. And that’s the only area of London I really knew, and I would never really leave that area. So, coming to Kensington was a real culture shock for me. Really?
Yeah. But, yeah, it was the business, the fashion business that bought me to London the first time. I absolutely fell out of love with it after doing it for my whole adult life. It’s the only job I really had, and wanted to do something more creative. And I think the good thing about starting a business at such a young age is I had some financial backing to take some time away and think about what I really wanted to do. And there were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to work in film, and I wanted to have my own little shop. And two other people, that might sound absolutely insane because they just don’t seem to go together. But they do. I went to film school in 2024.
I went to the National Film and TV School in Beckinsfield. I was really lucky to get in. I did a lovely course there. And it really gave me the confidence that I was lacking to really believe I could pursue film. At the same time, we were sort of running this online store part time. And I wanted something more solid to fall back on in case the film either didn’t work or I got bored of it. I fell out of love as I did with fashion. So I just thought, well, you only live once. I’m going to do everything. And that’s what I’m doing. We decided to open our first brick and mortar shop last May.
And it was a really scary thing to do, but also really exciting. And it was Ian, our third business partner, who actually found the space here on Kensington Church Walk. And I fell in love immediately. I mean, it’s one of the most beautiful streets in London. How could you not fall in love with the street? And I did a little walk up and down. And I spoke to Hornets and I met Mark and I asked him what he thought. And he was really, really lovely. And I thought, I really like his vibe and I really like his shop. And then I sort of came back undercover a few times before I put an offer in.
And I watched and I thought, I know it’s not the busiest street, but I think it’s perfect for us. And yeah, and here we are. And here’s Sarita. And so Sarita, big sister came down to London and you stayed in Wolverhampton for a time and watched her. And go on. Yeah. So I used to visit Neely back when she used to have her agency. So I’m familiar with London just from the visiting part. And I’ve always liked it. And when they started Fable and Mirth online, I would kind of like to dip in to kind of like help with copy because that’s my background. I’m a copywriter.
So I would just dip in and help as and when. But then last year, just as you opened the store, I was actually made redundant. So I was facing a choice that and Neely said, well, why don’t you join us? I’ve never done anything where running business is involved. I’ve always worked for somebody else. And I’ve literally been thrown into the deep end and literally been learning on the job alongside having Neely’s extensive years of experience and the older sibling kind of like encouragement. So under her guide by from both sister and a business owner, I’ve kind of tried my hardest to like catch up and and learn what I can. And I thought, well, why not? Because this also gives me the opportunity to build something and I’m doing it for myself. So the the winds are mine, the lows are mine, but they’re mine.
And at the end of the day, I’m going to be working this hard. I want to do do for myself, not make another big fat cat rich. So yeah, there you go. So tell us now about Fable and Mirth. It’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful little shop. It’s really special and it’s surely unique. I mean, it’s a gift shop, right? But with a difference. Yeah. So the name Fable and Mirth again was thought up by Ian.
Fable being my storytelling background, my filmmaking, because I also write films. And Mirth is him. He’s Mr. Mirth because he thinks he makes everybody laugh. That’s nice. So yeah, he thought of the name and I really liked it. So I think it really represents the shop because we were the products we sell are all curated and they are all story led. So they really have to have an interesting story. There needs to be a reason why people buy from us and not a million and one shops on the high street. And as a consumer myself, I found England to be quite beige. And if you wanted anything with a little bit of whimsy or color, you tend to have to go to Paris or like Venice or somewhere like that.
So I thought, why not take everything that we love and we feel is missing and bring it to our shop? Everything in the shop is beautiful. How do you find these items? I genuinely love every single piece in that shop and I would have it in my own house. And we don’t buy it if we don’t love it. We find… Well, we’ve traveled. I’ve done a lot of trampling so I’ve known about certain European brands that I haven’t seen in the UK. So we stock some of those. I really like to work with makers that usually make their product from scratch and by hand. And we work with people from all over the world.
We have these gorgeous handmade Guatemalan pots, which are fair trade. The rugs are designed by us and they’re made by a lovely factory in Jaipur in India that primarily employ widows. So we do try and really think about where our products are coming from. And again, the real idea behind ‘Fair Blom Earth’ is it should make you feel like you’ve stepped into a storybook and it should evoke joy and make you feel like you’re a child again and you’ve picked up a fairy tale book. You know when you get lost in those really colorful vintage fairy tale illustrations, that’s what you should really feel when you come into our shop. And I’m proud to say I think we’ve achieved it because everybody tells us the same thing again and again. Oh my God, I could stay here forever. And that really does make us very, very happy.
And then we have our little dog, Lady, who’s really now the mascot. And sometimes I feel that she’s more popular than the products. We have people come in asking about Lady, who I’ve never even met. We do have actually evidence of that because we’re a little bit of a humble brag. We have five-star reviews on Google and most of them will be for Lady specifically. So that’s not even a thought. We have it officially in writing. Yeah, well, as you know, I bring my groups by the shop and I love going by the shop, both on my way to meet my groups and then when we come by, actually on the walk. And I love it. I mean, it’s just a visual feast and also it’s just you two are so friendly and you’re beautiful smiling faces. But now I know a bit of the backstory and that makes it even better.
I had no idea about all of this and it’s always the stories that illuminate. It’s like the lights being switched on. It’s like lighting a candle in a dark room. Oh, thank you. That’s really nice of you to say. I really appreciate that. And I think that’s what really makes me jump out of bed and come to work, which I found I wasn’t doing with my previous role anymore is the fact that we can bring joy to people just through the products, even if you don’t ever come in just our window displays, make people smile. And we get to meet some incredible people as well from all over the world. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but never like this. I mean, we’ve made some lifelong friends already in the year from all over the world and we’ve had them come back to us in this year. And it’s such a special feeling. It really is.
And it’s a testament to the environment that we’ve created for people. It’s not just a shop that people can come in and we spend the time to talk to them and we find out about them. And it’s more than just a transactional sale for us. It’s so important. A huge difference from the impersonality and couldn’t care less attitude of board shop assistants on the High Street. I mean, you’re getting it right along, obviously, with Hornets and you got Nicole next door and Shirley. It’s really a wonderful little role. It really is. And we genuinely love every single one of our neighbours. I mean, Hornets, can we just say how incredible are Hornets? I mean, Bill Hornets, Orlando, Mark, David, they’re all just like, oh my God, they’re just a ray of sunshine. And we have so many laughs with them, like belly laughs.
We belly laugh with those guys. And I don’t think we’d be here without their support though, either. I generally think that they’re really encouraged us. Because, you know, opening a shop at the start, it was like really quiet. Like we were very naive. We thought we’re going to open this pretty shop and people will just find us. Yes, that sort of happened. But then there’s lots of work that we did behind the scenes. There’s like lots of tech stuff now that we have to do, unfortunately, SEO and that sort of stuff. But then social media and collaborating with bloggers and all of that. And before any of that, we’ve had a lot of encouragement from Hornets, which has meant a lot to us. So somebody looking for, for example, a really special, perhaps a birthday gift or just a gift for a good friend or a Christmas gift or something like that, they come to you, they’re going to get, well, personal treatment and they’ll be able to see things that they won’t find on the high street ever.
Is that right? Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right. So a lot of our stuff, we don’t buy mass made things. So we buy very small quantities and because often they are handmade, no two pieces are ever really the same. So for example, we sell these really quirky, beautiful handmade, hand-painted porcelain, quite high end staplers that are shaped like animals and birds and flowers. And if you actually look at them, no two pieces are the same. You can see differences. You can see they have been handmade and hand-painted. So yeah, if you are looking for a really unusual gift, something different, we’re definitely the place to come to. And what about for kids? Do any of your wares would be appropriate for a child? Maybe a kid with some taste.
That’s well put. That’s really well put. You know, we do because I was quite surprised myself actually because we have this French jewelry brand and they do very cute little animals. I’d wear them myself but we’ve noticed that actually some of the children like it. I’m thinking these are some quality children here with some taste. So we’re not really a shop for children but we do sometimes have some really nice heirloom type gifts for kids. And I expect a lot of the business is kind of word of mouth, is that right? Yeah, definitely. So what about particulars now? When are you open and how do they find you and is there a website and all of that? There’s a website which is just fableandmurth.com. We at the moment are open from…
Is that A&D or with the… Yeah, it’s A&D. Yeah, fableandmurth.com. Yeah, and we’re currently open from Wednesday to Sunday but we are finding we’re getting busy and busiest so we might have to extend those hours. Yeah, so… With us being online as well people can always drop us a message which we get now quite often asking us and obviously we can always cater. Well it’s just Ian, so I’m sure you’re on my side. So we’re not a big corporate firm so if you need a vase put aside for you just message us. Okay, so Neely if you had say a phone inquiry and you were telling the person how to get to the shop what would be your directions? Oh I’d be, hello fableandmurth.
And then I’d say well there’s two ways you can get to us. We are like a stone’s throw from Kensington High Street. Look for the IV, keep walking past the IV then you’ll come up to this amazing magical Harry Potter-esque church. Look to your left and then you’ll see us. And if you’re coming from Kensington Palace just cross over and keep walking, keep walking and then you’ll see us. Or they could go on my walk. That’s too good, I’ll go to yes. Cheeky of me. Yeah, oh they can, yeah. And speaking of which I’d better high tail it. Thank you both very, very much.
Thank you very much. I’ll let you know when I put it out. It’ll go out sometime in the next few days. Look forward to it. Thank you David. You’re both great interviewers.