Birmingham nostalgia: Looking back at the Onion Fair

Sep 5 2010

WHEN you were a kid brought up in the back-to-backs in the Forties, entertainment was almost non-existent.

We had ‘the flicks’ once a week; there were various radio programmes to be listened to in the dark, all huddled together by the flickering red, yellow and blue flames of the fire, like The Man in Black and Dick Barton, Special Agent.

Most of what we did was play games that had been invented to keep bored kids occupied in the tiny rooms and yards, back alleys and streets of old Brum.

So in reality there wasn’t much outside entertainment, as there is today.

But once a year the Onion Fair came to Brum and not only to Brum but to Aston, the district where I lived.

Back then, Aston covered a very large area so that you could walk miles and still be in the same district, and getting to the Onion Fair from Cowper Street, off Summer Lane, was a good walk when you were a little nipper.

It was at least a couple of miles from our house.

The route we would take would be to turn left out of Cowper Street into Newtown Row, down past the Aston Hip and the Barton’s Arms, with its outside horse trough, up Potters Hill, right into Park Lane, left into Sutton Street, across Tower Road, Clifton Road, Victoria Road and turn right at Albert Road across Thomas Street and left into Park Lane. Down Park Lane, passing that great old building Aston Hall on the left, across Trinity Road – and the Onion Fair was situated behind Aston Parish Church.

As you came down Park Lane you could hear the roar and noise of the fair as you walked down the hill, and the lights would be reflected back off the clouds overhead.

Going onto the fairground proper, your nose would be assailed by the many smells that a fair has.