You dancer!

William Kimber was a bricklayer. But 1899 was a hard winter, and by Boxing Day he'd been out of work for three weeks. So he went out with the Headington Quarry morris dancers to earn some money.

According to the Headington Historical Society - I guess we should take their word for it - they danced the Laudnum Bunches and Rigs o’ Marlow.

One Cecil Sharp heard morris tunes for the first time that day, and that meeting laid the foundations for his great work of recovering many of the morris dances of England and teaching them to the early dancers of the morris revival, using the experienced Kimber as his right hand man. While Sharp lectured, Kimber would demonstrate steps and dance jigs. The Musical Times of March 1911 described Kimber as being “like a Greek statue … his grace and movements are absolutely classic”.

In October 1958 he cut the tape to open a new street in Quarry named after him: William Kimber Crescent, so I guess that makes him kind of famous.

He seemed to do well enough out of it, making enough money to build this house and a series of others along the same road. And it's probably more fun than bricklaying.