Sutton Halloween: £2 Honeywood Trail, 24 to 31 October

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).

Several things are already dated. Honeywood Museum in Carshalton runs a Halloween trail across the whole window, Westcroft Library has two free craft mornings, and Whitehall in Cheam is open for free tours on both Saturdays. Everything below was checked on 6 September, and the gaps are flagged as gaps.

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

• 24 to 31 October, Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm
• £2 a child, drop-in, payable by card at reception. No booking
• Follow the trail, then decorate a model cauldron, a pumpkin mask and a wizarding hat
• The museum encourages children to come in costume, and says Millie will be in hers

Because the museum only opens Thursday to Saturday, that window works out at four actual days: Saturday 24, Thursday 29, Friday 30 and Saturday 31 October. If you are planning around the half-term week itself, Thursday and Friday are your two options.

Wizard and Witches Escape Room Experience

• Saturday 31 October, multiple sessions through the day
• £3 a child, advance booking only, and the booking link was not yet live on 6 September
• Aimed at children aged 7 to 12. The premise is a detention in Professor Vector’s office that you have to escape

The escape room will sell out on a Halloween Saturday in a museum that holds a few dozen people at a time, so watch the Friends’ events page rather than turning up.

The council’s free half-term events, so far

Sutton Council’s cultural service runs the library, museum and ecology centre programme, and it has an October Half Term category in its booking system. Two events were tagged into it on 6 September, both at Westcroft Library, inside Westcroft Leisure Centre on Westcroft Road, Carshalton SM5 2TG. Both are free, all ages and need no booking (events.sutton.gov.uk):

• Create your own pumpkin decoration, Monday 26 October, 10.30am to noon. Making and decorating a pumpkin while Halloween stories are read
• Create your own monster decoration, Saturday 31 October, 10.30am to noon. Same idea, a friendly or creepy monster to name and take home

That is the whole half-term list at the moment, and it will grow. The council loads the rest of the programme through late September and early October, so check the category again from the start of October. The venues that feed into it are Sutton Central, Cheam, Wallington, Westcroft, Worcester Park and Circle libraries, plus Honeywood Museum, Little Holland House, Whitehall Historic House, Sutton Ecology Centre and The Grange Play Centre.

Whitehall in Cheam, free, both Saturdays

Whitehall Historic House at 1 Malden Road, Cheam SM3 8QD runs volunteer-led tours every Saturday from noon to 2pm, free, drop in, no booking. That covers Saturday 24 October and Saturday 31 October, either side of the half-term week. The tours cover the house, its past residents and the history of Cheam.

One caveat the council makes itself: opening hours and the tours depend on whether volunteer guides are available that day, so it is not a cast-iron booking. Booking is described as advised but not required, which in practice means turning up early rather than at 1.50pm.

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.

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.