Thomas Fielding Johnson - Family Life

Family Life

Fielding Johnson was born at Nether Langwith, Notttinghamshire, the third of eight children born to John Goode Johnson (1798-1872) and Eliza Fielding (1803–1878). His very early years were spent at the family home, The Old Mill House in Langwith but he soon followed his elder brother to study at the Nonconformist Proprietary School in Leicester (the building now occupied by the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery) and moved into the Leicester home of his uncle (his mother's brother) and aunt, Joseph and Martha Fielding.

His aunt and uncle had no children of their own and Fielding Johnson was adopted by them in 1840 aged twelve. This sort of arrangement was not uncommon among the Victorian middle-classes and allowed the wealth earned by successful parents to be passed down the generations and retained within families. Previously known simply as Thomas Johnson, from then on he adopted the surname that he is now known by; Fielding Johnson.

In 1855 Fielding Johnson married Julia Christiana Stone, the daughter of Samuel Stone and Mary Chamberlain. As the first Town Clerk to the New Corporation of Leicester (an office equivalent to Chief Executive in the modern City Council and which he held between 1836 and 1872), Fielding Johnson's father-in-law was a prominent member of Leicester's growing professional middle-class. He was a partner in the legal firm of Stone, Paget and Billson and left a legacy to future generations of lawyers in the form of his `Stone's Justices' Manual', a definitive legal text which is still available today. The marriage ended after only four years as a result of Christiana's premature death in 1859. It produced two sons; Thomas Fielding Johnson Junior (1856–1931) and Joseph (1857) who died aged only six months.

Fielding Johnson remarried in 1863. His second wife came from his existing social circle and was Agnes Paget, second daughter of Alfred Paget and Eliza Smith. Alfred Paget was also a partner in the firm of Stone, Paget and Billson and belonged to a local family with a landowning background whose younger members were prominent in Leicester's professions. This second marriage -which appears to have been a very happy one- lasted until Agnes died in 1917. It produced a daughter Agnes Mabel (1864-1942) and a son, Harold Paget (1865–1877) who contracted measles while a boarder at Rugby School and died, aged only twelve.

From 1869 until Thomas's death, The Fielding Johnson family lived at `Brookfield', a large Victorian house standing in its own miniature `estate' and modelled on the seats of the local gentry. Situated in open countryside along the London Road and just beyond the town boundary, it was one of the first houses to be built in what later became the residential suburb of Stoneygate. The house and grounds were gifted to the new Diocese of Leicester by Thomas Fielding Johnson Junior in the 1920s and became the home of Bishop Bardsley, Leicester's first bishop since the ninth century. They were until recently the Charles Frears School of Nursing and Midwifery and part of the Leicester De Montfort University.