The first of the rebranded triannual antiques and collectors’ fairs will run on Saturday and Sunday, March 7-8, and will be a two-day event rather than three days as previously.
Continuity Fairs’ director Nick Bayliss said: “The Bingley Hall is a big old building and we plan to smarten it up and offer some elements of the NEC by carpeting half the exhibitor area and having this stand-fitted, although there will be plenty of tabletop space too.”
He added: “There is space for 350 stands and I already have 200 standholders signed up. Continuity Fairs has a good following and I would like to make the Bingley Hall antiques fairs into a really special event starting with three big weekend shows this year.”
Event history
The Bingley Hall antiques fairs have a 40-year history of ownership in the same family.
As Bowman Antiques Fairs, they were launched by the late Elizabeth and Peter Bowman in 1978, who at one point ran dozens of events at venues across the UK, particularly in the north of England. The Bowmans were joined by their daughter Helen and her husband Ben Wray in 1995, who relinquished the Bingley Hall fair to IACF in 2018. Bowman Antiques Fairs had also launched an antiques and art fair at the Yorkshire Showground in 2009 which became part of the Continuity portfolio in 2018.
Family firm
Based in Ludlow, Continuity Fairs is one of the longest-running fairs’ businesses on the circuit. A family affair founded by Donald Bayliss more than four decades ago and now run by son Nick, the organisers’ flagship fair is still the event held in mid-Wales at the Builth Wells Showground which has been held there since 2003.
With the acquisition of the Bingley Hall event Continuity Fairs now has a seven-venue fairs portfolio including a biannual antiques and vintage fair at Bath Racecourse, new for this year.
