 Wilfrid Eggleston was born on 25 March 1901 in Lincoln to English parents who had moved from Spalding two years earlier, where his older sister Margaret had been born. His father was a former tax collector, his mother, a shop assistant and dressmaking apprentice; they had married in Grantham come 1897 after meeting as choristers in the town's Methodist chapel. Eggleston's father, one of nine children from a Nottinghamshire farm, relocated the family regularly through his successful work at an insurance firm. His mother, similarly privileged, is said to have received an education from a "Victorian private school for young ladies". The family purchased a grocer's shop in Netherfield, Nottinghamshire, briefly resettling there until 1909. During this short period, Wilfrid was educated at the newly established Chandos Street Secondary School, which amalgamated in 1973 to form Carlton le Willows School.
