Fair Scotland have launched a campaign to save the events across the country.

A Scottish charity representing showpeople across the country has warned of fears for a historic fair in the south of Scotland amid flooding risks. 

Fair Scotland has launched a campaign to save fairs, as well as starting to collate a list of lost and endangered events.

Fair Scotland co-chairs Dr TS Beall and Dr Mitch Miller told BBC Scotland they hoped by highlighting fairs which had already been lost and those under threat they could save more from disappearing.

The warning comes as fears emerge for the future of a fair in Dumfries which has been held at the same location for centuries. 

The event at Whitesands was under threat due to a flood prevention project in the area, with the charity warning this put the fair itself in danger. 

The local council has said conversations with fair organisers will continue, with work not expected to start until at least 2026. 

Dr Beall of Fair Scotland told BBC Scotland there was a risk the Dumfries fairs might simply "wither and die" if they could no longer be accommodated on the Whitesands.

"There is a very current situation regarding the flood protection plans and it is, simply put, that the plans as they are currently in place may not allow the fairs," she told BBC Scotland.

"These fairs may not be able to continue to be staged on the Whitesands, where they have literally been operating every single year for probably 700 to 800 years, outwith Covid.

"We really want to highlight to people in Dumfries and Galloway and for everyone living in Dumfries how fragile the fairs are.

"They seem so robust and lively and amazing - and they are all those things - but they're also this kind of incredibly fragile ecosystem of individual family firms that travel from all across Scotland and north and central England to put rides and stalls together.

"I think if you disrupt that ecosystem, for example, by moving the fair to another location or by constricting the fair or shunting the fair into a wee parking lot nearby what that will do is allow the fair to wither and die.

"It may not be immediate, but if you move it, if you constrain it, if you take it off of its historic grounds, it will wither and die - that's what our research suggests.

"I think it is the kind of thing that once you lose it you will miss it.” 

Dr Miller added: "My parents had very different travelling routes and Dumfries was one of the very few fairs where they could see each other during the season," he explained.

"After the fair closed, they were allowed to have a date which consisted of my dad walking my mum up and down the fair when it was closed and then back inside every night.

"To say it's important would be an understatement."