Sutton Halloween: £2 Trails, Ecology Centre Slots Going

October half term in Sutton runs Monday 26 October to Friday 30 October 2026, and Halloween falls on Saturday 31 October, the day after the schools go back for the weekend. Those are the dates for the borough’s community schools, published by Sutton Council; academies and church schools set their own and a few differ by a day (Sutton Council, school term dates).

The programme is now out. There are three Halloween trails: £2 at Whitehall in Cheam and £2 at Honeywood in Carshalton, both from Saturday 17 October, and a £5.99 Room on the Broom trail at the Sutton Ecology Centre on the Monday and Tuesday of half term. Honeywood’s escape room is now fully booked, and the libraries and Whitehall have free sessions. Everything below was first checked on 6 September and re-checked against the organisers’ pages on 16 October.

Updated 23 October: the High Street pumpkin trail is smaller than first billed: 4 shops and 200 treat bags, not 10 shops and 300. At the Ecology Centre, Monday’s 11am, 11.20am, 11.40am and noon slots and Tuesday’s 11am and 11.20am slots are sold out; later slots on both days still had places.

Updated 16 October: St Nicholas Shopping Centre has published a Halloween programme: a monster trail from 19 October, £3 cookie and Monster Hunter sessions on 27 October and a drop-in LEGO build on 29 October. Honeywood’s escape room on 30 October is fully booked.

Updated 13 October: the High Street Halloween market is now a free pumpkin trail too, with 300 trick or treat bags for tokens collected from 10 shops; the shops are named on 30 October.

Updated 3 October: Honeywood’s escape room has moved from Saturday 31 to Friday 30 October. The council has published its half-term list, adding the Whitehall and Ecology Centre trails, a songwriting workshop and a free comics afternoon, and the BID has listed a Halloween market on Sutton High Street.

Honeywood, Carshalton: the trail and the escape room

Honeywood Museum sits on Honeywood Walk beside Carshalton Ponds, SM5 3NX. Entry to the museum is free and it opens Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Two Halloween events are published on the Friends of Honeywood’s own events page (Friends of Honeywood Museum, events):

Millie’s Magical Spells and Potions Trail

• Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, to Saturday 31 October
• £2, drop-in, payable by card at reception. No booking
• Hunt for potion ingredients, then decorate a model cauldron, a pumpkin mask and a witch’s hat
• The museum encourages children to come in costume, and says Millie will be in hers

The two organisers give different start dates. The Friends’ page says 24 to 31 October; the council’s booking page lists seven days from Saturday 17 October: the 17th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 29th, 30th and 31st (Sutton Council, Honeywood’s trail). The museum is open on all seven, so the earlier dates are likely to be right, but if you are going on the 17th, 22nd or 23rd it is worth a call first. Inside half term itself, Thursday 29 and Friday 30 are your two weekday options.

Wizards and Witches Escape Room

• Friday 30 October, not the Saturday as first listed. Four one-hour sessions: 10.45am, noon, 2pm and 3.15pm (Sutton Council, escape room)
• Advance booking only, in teams of up to five. Book fewer than five places and you may share the room with another group
• The Friends’ page prices it at £3, the council’s booking page at £2. You pay what the booking page charges
• Aimed at children aged 7 to 12, with an adult. The premise is a detention in Professor Vector’s office that you have to escape

All four sessions are now fully booked. The council’s booking page says “This event is fully booked” and offers a waiting list, which is the only way in now (Sutton Council, escape room).

Sutton Ecology Centre: a Room on the Broom trail

The one paid trail of the week is outdoors at the Sutton Ecology Centre, Festival Walk, Carshalton SM5 3NY, on Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 October. The witch from Room on the Broom has lost her wand, bow and hat, and children search the gardens for them, invent a spell and make a wand to take home (Sutton Council, Halloween Trail: Witches and Broomsticks).

• £5.99 a child. Book children only; accompanying adults do not need a ticket
• The earliest slots have gone. On 23 October the booking page showed Monday’s four arrival slots from 11am to noon and Tuesday’s 11am and 11.20am slots sold out, with places left in every slot from 12.20pm on Monday and from 11.40am on Tuesday
• You book an arrival slot, every 20 minutes from 11am to 1.40pm, then stay as long as you like until 3pm
• Suggested for ages two and over. It is entirely outside, there is a toilet on site, so dress for the weather

The Ecology Centre is a few minutes’ walk from Honeywood across the ponds, so the two trails fit into one morning.

The council’s free half-term events

Sutton Council’s cultural service runs the library, museum and ecology centre programme through an October Half Term category in its booking system (events.sutton.gov.uk). Three free sessions are at the libraries:

• Create your own pumpkin decoration, Monday 26 October, 10.30am to noon, Westcroft Library, inside Westcroft Leisure Centre, Westcroft Road, Carshalton SM5 2TG. Making and decorating a pumpkin while Halloween stories are read. All ages, no booking
• Songwriting workshop, Wednesday 28 October, 10.30am to noon, Wallington Library, Shotfield SM6 0HY. Songwriters lead ages 8 to 12 through writing a song from a children’s book. Book one ticket per child (Sutton Libraries)
• Create your own monster decoration, Saturday 31 October, 10.30am to noon, Westcroft Library. Same idea as Monday’s, a friendly or creepy monster to name and take home. No booking

Whitehall in Cheam: a Tudor trail and free comics

Whitehall Historic House at 1 Malden Road, Cheam SM3 8QD has two Halloween events of its own.

Tudor Cunning Women’s Secret Trail, £2 a person, paid on arrival, no booking. It runs in the house’s normal opening hours: Saturdays 17, 24 and 31 October from noon to 4pm, and Thursdays and Fridays 22, 23, 29 and 30 October from 10am to 4pm. The trail tells the story of Cheam’s Tudor “cunning women”, the herbalists with their remedies and charms, and children make a cauldron and a Halloween Whitehall model (Sutton Council, Tudor Cunning Women’s Secret Trail).

Haunted House Comics, Saturday 31 October, 1.30pm to 3.30pm, free, just turn up. The local arts educator Mark Pembrey helps families draw cheeky ghosts and chattering pumpkins and make a haunted-house-shaped comic to take home. It is pitched at children aged six and over, and parents stay (Sutton Council, Haunted House Comics).

The free volunteer-led tours also run every Saturday from noon to 2pm, including 24 and 31 October, depending on a guide being available that day.

One more thing about Whitehall. If you search for it you may land on friendsofwhitehallcheam.co.uk. That address no longer belongs to the Friends of Whitehall: the domain has been taken over and now serves online gambling content. Ignore whatever it appears to list. Whitehall’s real listings are in the council’s booking system above.

Sutton High Street: a Halloween market and pumpkin trail

The Northend Market, the small-business market that sets up on the last Saturday of each month, goes Halloween on Saturday 31 October on Sutton High Street near Waterstones, now billed as a Halloween Market and Pumpkin Trail. The town centre’s business improvement district, which runs it, promises “spooky fun, entertainment and FREE craft activities”: a free lucky dip, free face painting and free children’s crafts with Stitches Academy, alongside the market’s traders. Entry is free. The listing’s date panel gives 10am to 4pm, but its own text says “join us from 11am to 4pm”, so arrive from 11am for the activities.

The trail: 4 shops on Sutton High Street will hand out pumpkin tokens, no purchase needed, and you swap your token at the market stall for a free trick or treat bag. There are only 200 tokens and 200 bags, cut on 21 October from the 10 shops and 300 bags first announced, and the BID will not name the 4 shops until Friday 30 October, when the trail map goes up on its home page (Enjoy Sutton, Halloween Market and Pumpkin Trail). It is a short walk from the Central Library, The Sound Lounge and the St Nicholas Centre.

St Nicholas Centre: Monster Mayhem

The St Nicholas Shopping Centre, on St Nicholas Way (SM1 1AY), runs Monster Mayhem from Monday 19 to Saturday 31 October:

• Monster Hunt trail, 19 to 31 October. Pick up a trail form from the Toy Barnhaus shop, find the monsters hidden around the centre, and you get a sweet treat for finishing. The centre does not give a price for the trail.
• Monster Cookie Make and Take plus Monster Hunter sessions, Tuesday 27 October, 11am to 4pm, in the Kids Zone near Caffe Kiko on Level 1. Children decorate a monster cookie and take part in a 30-minute Monster Hunter session. These must be booked in advance: tickets are £3 on Eventbrite, and a quieter SEN-friendly session at 3.30pm is booked separately (Eventbrite, Monster Mayhem at St Nics).
• Toy Barnhaus LEGO Make and Take, Thursday 29 October, 11am to 3pm, same place, drop in, “whilst stocks last”.

(St Nicholas Centre, BIG fun for Halloween). The centre opens 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Saturday (7pm on Thursdays) and 9.30am to 5.30pm on Sundays.

For grown-ups on Halloween night

The Sound Lounge on Sutton High Street holds The Phantom of the Opry, a fancy dress Halloween party with live music, on Saturday 31 October from 8pm to 11pm. Come as the ghost of your favourite artist; there is a prize for the best costume, and tickets are pay what you can, from free to £20 (The Sound Lounge). The same evening CryerArts in Carshalton has A Band Called Malice playing The Jam, and on Thursday 29 October its folk horror special, Scarred for Life. The rest are on our what’s on in Sutton this month page.

There is no free half-term childcare scheme

This one catches people out every year. Sutton’s Holiday Activities and Food programme, the government-funded scheme that gives free places and a hot meal to children on benefits-related free school meals, does not run at half term. Sutton’s version covers one week at Easter, four weeks in summer and one week at Christmas, and the council’s own page says so twice (Sutton Information Hub, Holiday Activities and Food programme, page last updated 23 July 2026). If you are eligible, the next round is the Christmas week, not October.

Fireworks on Halloween night: the curfew still applies

Halloween is not one of the four nights the law makes an exception for. Under the Fireworks Regulations 2004 it is an offence to set fireworks off between 11pm and 7am, and the extensions run only to 1am after the first day of Chinese New Year, to midnight on 5 November, to 1am after Diwali and to 1am on 1 January. There is no Halloween extension, so anything going off after 11pm on 31 October is over the line. The penalty is an unlimited fine or six months in prison, and it is the police, not the council, who enforce it (Sutton Council, fireworks and the law).

Two other things from the same page are worth knowing in the last week of October. Shops can only sell fireworks to the public between 15 October and 10 November without a special licence, so the pop-up counters appear mid-month and go. And nobody under 18 may legally possess fireworks at all. Anti-social use is reported to the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team.

Bonfire night is not in half term

Thursday 5 November falls the week after the schools go back, and there is no fireworks display anywhere in the London Borough of Sutton. The Carshalton Park display was cancelled permanently by its organisers and nobody has replaced it. The two nearest confirmed displays are in Epsom and in Merton, both on Saturday 7 November. The detail, times, gates and what happened to the Carshalton event, is on our Sutton fireworks and bonfire night page.

Getting there

Honeywood is on the pond side of Carshalton High Street, five minutes’ walk from Carshalton station. Half term is one of the weeks when the High Street car park fills by mid-morning; the two closest are Carshalton High Street SM5 3AP and The Square SM5 3BN, and Carshalton Park Road has an unusual pay-and-display window that only bites between 9am and 11am. Our parking in Sutton page sets out the tariffs and the free periods car park by car park, and Sutton roadworks and travel has anything dug up on the way.

For the rest of the year, things to do in Sutton lists sixteen days out we checked ourselves.