One of Bermuda’s oldest dwellings hosted a new event on Saturday celebrating the onion — a crop so traditional Bermudians are still named after it.

Onion Day was marked at Carter House in St David’s, which is one of Bermuda’s oldest surviving structures. The old farm house is thought to be about 300 years old.

An onion competition sought out the largest produce and there were some impressive bunches on display.

Michael Tucker’s Bermuda onions took the crown, while Fred Stailey’s green onions came in a very close second.

The organisers of Onion Day wanted to demonstrate some aspects of life in the mid-1800s, and with that in mind chef Joe Gibbons, a specialist in early culinary practices, was serving up pulled pork that had been cooked overnight to produce a tender meat which almost fell off the bone.

He served it in cornbread buns with onions, of course, fried with bacon on an outdoor fire.

Gary Lamb of the nearby Black Horse Tavern provided curried fish, and onion soup was available along with a variety of other onion-infused dishes.

St David’s Island Historical Society trustees Ronnie Chameau, Deanna Smith, and Rick and Jane Spurling, were dressed in period costume for the event.

Larry Miller — who came up with the idea of Onion Day — was also in period dress, re-enacting the role of a carpenter aboard The Plough, the ship which brought some of the earliest settlers to the Island, and fascinated audiences throughout the day.

He gave the reenactment inside the Settler’s Dwelling, created in 2012 to show what 1612-era homes would have been like.

It features a crude but functioning cooking fireplace built using the English techniques and tools of the period, and Bermuda materials including cedar, lime and clay, turtle oil and palmetto thatch.

Ms Chameau attested that inside the house, it remains warm in winter, but cool during the summer months. She added that Carter House and the Settler’s Dwelling were unaffected by Hurricanes Fay and Gonzalo last year.

“These two houses stood their ground. Even the palmetto stayed on,” she said.