Fairs, Markets, Shops and Centres

The latest venue in south London for the vintage and retro fairs run by Alison Davis and Alan Old as So Last Century has an interesting history, to say the least.

The busy market town of Beccles on the River Waveney at the edge of the Broads National Park in Suffolk started an antiques street market in the closed-off town centre nine years ago, in early May.

Shown here at Antiques on High in Oxford is Caroline Henney, left, a costume jewellery dealer at this antiques centre, with Caroline Hawley, right, an auctioneer in Beverley, East Yorkshire, who is also a regular on the BBC‘s 'Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is' and 'Flog It!'

Classic camera collectors, users and dealers from around the world will be focusing their attentions this weekend on Photographica, the annual specialist fair organised in London by the Photographic Collectors’ Club of Great Britain.

Lady McAlpine says she is now more determined than ever to make the Décor- Architectural architectural salvage event a success after the death of her husband, Sir William, on March 4.

Allan Bellamy of Gazelles in Lyndhurst has been a dealer in Art Deco since 1982 and is a regular exhibitor at Deco fairs around the UK.

The first of Arthur Swallow Fairs’ Decorative Home and Salvage Shows this year kicks off on Friday, May 11, and runs to Sunday, May 13, at Ripley Castle near Harrogate.

The lone swimmer at the Brockwell Lido pictured here appears oblivious to what’s going on alongside the walkways.

The third Great Tisbury Brocante will run on the spring bank holiday, Monday, May 7, all through the streets of the Wiltshire town.

Eight years ago textiles dealers Liz van Hasselt and Clare Powell came up with the idea of holding a monthly vintage bazaar in the Somerset market town of Frome, which has a cluster of vintage shops on Catherine Hill.

A look at how specialist events at Knebworth and Solihull are now under the same banner.

Artist Mel Winning runs a reclamation business in the medieval market town of Manningtree in Essex.

Keeley Harris of Discover Vintage launched the ambitious Festival of Vintage at York Racecourse in 2011 and each year the line-up gets bigger.

Celebrated in the thoroughly modern way with a Google Doodle on April 3 on what would have been his 325th birthday was John Harrison.

Organiser of new Surrey event pleased at positive reaction and trader response.

A reminder of a fair we previewed in January: Caroline Brown’s second vintage furniture and homewares fair takes place on Saturday and Sunday, April 28-29.

Steve Cooper of Haddon Events is such a keen supporter of the Museum of Power at Maldon in Essex that he holds a biannual antiques and collectors’ fair at the venue.

Neil Packer’s day job as a warehouse manager may seem tame compared to his out-of-hours activities.

The designer Emma Bridgewater began experimenting with what are now her signature sponge-painted ceramics in the bedroom of a former squat in Brixton.

One of the best-known faces on the fairs circuit is Matthew Adams, who has organised for nearly 40 years a monthly antiques fair at the Royal Horticultural Fair in London.