Biography:William Kimber
William Kimber
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| Given name: | William (Jr.) |
| Middle name: | |
| Family name: | Kimber |
| Place of birth: | |
| Place of death: | Headington, Oxford |
| Year of birth: | |
| Year of death: | 1961 |
| Profile: | Musician |
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Biographical notes
From the 1961 obituary notice of William Kimber:
MR. WILLIAM KIMBER
Mr. William Kimber, the well-known morris dancer, died at Headington, Oxford, on Boxing Day in a house he had built for himself many years ago. He was in his ninetieth year.
He was a bricklayer; on Boxing Day, 1899, when he was out of work because of the hard winter ("three weeks without a pay packet") the Headington Quarry morris side went out to earn a little money, although it was not the usual time of the year for the morris. At Sandfield Cottage, Mrs. Burch's house, they danced Laudnum Bunches and Rigs o' Marlow; the side was turning to go when' her son-in-law called to them from the window; this was Cecil Sharp, who had heard morris tunes for the first time; and he asked Will Kimber to come the following day and play over some of the Quarry morris tunes.
Next day Will played Beansetting and Constant Billy. Cecil Sharp wrote them down, then went across to the piano and played them. Sixty years later Will would talk of this with admiration: "I'd never seen anything like that before."
From that meeting flowed Sharp's great work of recovering so many of the morris dances of England and teaching them to the early dancers of the morris revival. In this work he used Kimber as his right hand man, since much of the material collected needed the help of an experienced morris man; "Often enough, me and five chairs", said Kimber.
He would spend days at a time in London; and while Sharp lectured, Kimber would demonstrate steps and dance jigs; he found it better than bricklaying.
The value Cecil Sharp himself put upon Kimber's work is shown in a letter written to Will shortly before Sharp's death. "Had it not been for our lucky meeting on December 26, 1899, at Headington, and the prominent part which, in the early days of the movement, you took not only in giving practical instruction but by capital demonstrations in public, the movement would never have been launched."
The old man lived to unveil a memorial plaque on Sandfield Cottage, 60 years to the very day when Sharp had called out to him; to refer with considerable satisfaction to "his morris sons" now dancing in the many clubs in every part of England: and to feel a natural pride in the part he had played in the great morris revival.
Will Kimber did not look for retirement in the morris; to the end he was training boys at the local secondary modern school. His memorial is the present day Headington Quarry morris side, worthy successors to many generations of Headington morris men; and the affection of hundreds of morris men who had known him, and knew what they owed to him.