Recollections of an Early Childhood

An interview with Desiree Carlton, great-niece of John Wield

Desiree was born in 1941 at Toronto House, now the Alliance Chemist , on The Broadway , Woodhall Spa . Her mother Zena Parker, nee Lee was the daughter of Grace Mary Lee, nee Dickinson , the sister of John Wield's wife, Asenath . She remembers that Asenath had two elder sisters, Lucy and Elizabeth Dickinson and two brothers, George and Joseph Dickinson . Lucy's married name was Rose and her grandson , John Rose, is a councillor in Metheringham .

John Wield's Victorian corrugated iron bungalow was one of only two erected in Woodhall Spa, the other one being in Horncastle Road close to Kirkby Lane . She remembers it being very cosy and homely and she loved going there for tea and cakes and watching the trains go by. John and Asenath regularly took her to the Teahouse in the Woods where she would enjoy watching red squirrels running around in the many trees which grew there at the time .There was always a great welcome at the house and she described them as a wonderful couple and John Wield as a fantastic man . She recalled that Asenath called John "Jacka" and sometimes "Bumpy" which she assumes were terms of endearment . He was employed full time as a bath chair proprietor, taking clients from the railway station to the various hotels and guest houses and from there to the Spa Baths . She described John as an inventor and when he was not servicing and repairing his bath chairs he made cameras , spectacles and monocles , worked in the garden and pursued his first love as a photographer . Desiree remembered his dark room in the cottage and the many hundreds of glass plates in the shed .

Desiree contracted tuberculosis in her lymph gland when she was six years old after drinking a glass of milk and spent twelve months in an isolation hospital . She remembers John and Asenath's two children Effie ( short for Euphena ) and Cedric and last saw them in 1953 . Cedric was a teacher and went to teach in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia She last saw John Wield in the early 1960's, she thinks 1962 , when she was living in Thornton and John Wield was in a home in Woodhall Spa. Desiree now lives with her husband in Metheringham , where she enjoys painting in watercolour.

Paddy O'Neill - February 2009