It was one of the original fast-foods, knocked together using left-over meat to satisfy the Friday night food cravings of workers in Birmingham in the 1900s.
Regulars would queue up with their dishes and jugs outside A W Lashford in Kings Heath, waiting for the latest consignment of freshly made faggots.
Served with onion gravy, mashed potatoes and mushy peas, faggots were the happy meal of Edwardian Brum.
Steve Lashford, the fifth-generation boss of Lashford, recalls how his grandmother, Grace, saw a gap in the market for ready meals, originally making the faggots at the family butchers shop in Kings Heath.
Steve says: “Grace started the fast food business. She was about 15 or 16. After school, that was her job on a Friday night.
“It was faggots and peas night. Locals used to bring along their jugs to have the faggots ladelled into them.
“Back then, there was no refrigeration so on a Saturday night the spare meat went into a pickling vat. It was preserved during the week and cooked by the following Friday for faggots.”
More than a century on, Lashford faggots remain a favourite dish and it makes on average 3,000 of them a week.
They are now made at the company’s base at Allcroft Road, Hall Green, and although the recipe has been adapted it is essentially the one put together by founder Albert Lashford.
