Fairs and Markets

Nathan Alexander is a busy man. He has opened three antiques centres in three years with two in Southampton and a third in Fareham, all under the same title of Robin’s Nest Emporium.

Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs’ mid-summer fair at the Dorking Halls on August 16 has been cancelled.

The Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair can go ahead as planned in September after the National Trust deemed it an ‘outdoor’ event.

The planned reopening at Easter of the former antiques warehouse in the Suffolk village of Long Melford was one of the last features to appear in this column prior to lockdown.

Towy Events organiser and dealer Robert Pugh has cancelled his August antiques and fleamarkets monthly event at the Carmarthen Showground and will await government guidance about when he can restart.

As well as dealers’ websites and multi-dealer portals, a number of online events are taking place this summer that feature a range of traders. Here is a selection of some of the places to find art and antiques online in the coming months.

Six months after the last Shepton Fleamarket was held at the Bath & West Showground in Somerset, the event returns on Sunday, August 16, with more than 250 stalls.

Jay Fairs aka Joy O’Meara, who launched her fairs in Oxfordshire in the 1980s with her sister Jill Napper, is excited about the return after a four-month absence of her popular monthly antiques fair at the parish hall in Benson, near Oxford, on Sunday, August 16.

Fairs held at conference and events venues that involve more than 30 people at any one time will not be possible under government legislation until October 1.

It’s not often that an antiques fair is likened to a Led Zep reunion, but bear with us…

'Frieze' and 'Frieze Masters' have joined the steadily lengthening list of fairs to be cancelled or rescheduled as a result of coronavirus.

Stephanie Castell, owner of The Secondhand Warehouse in the Herefordshire town of Leominster, resorted to an extreme measure to make social distancing easier when the centre reopened: she took a wall out.