Married life

Gimson’s sceptical attitude towards religious matters did not stand in the way of his friendship with Emily Anne Thompson, the cousin of the vicar at Duntisbourne Rouse, a small village near their craft community at Pinbury, Gloucestershire. She was about three years younger than him and shared an interesting in music and folk traditions.

In November 1899 Gimson wrote to his mother from Pinbury:

‘Are you going to be surprised or has some little gossip reached you before this. I am told that it has been expected of me for some time and I hardly wonder at it. No doubt Maggie and Sarah have more or less prepared you, as I imagine my behaviour to have prepared them. Well, I’ve been falling in love and getting engaged - to Emmie Thompson. I had a nice letter from her mother this morning and soon I hope to have another nice one from my mother.’ The couple were married in 1900.

Harry Davoll, the cabinet maker who worked with Gimson from November 1901, described Gimson as a tall, thin man, about six foot, while his wife was a very little woman. Davoll and his fellow craftsmen were often amused to see the couple coming across the fields to the Daneway workshop. Gimson walked with long strides while Emily trotted along beside him.

Alfred Powell who had been an architectural student in London with Gimson went to the Cotswolds early in 1901 to convalesce after a severe attack of pleurisy. Initially he stayed with the Gimsons and wrote to his mother:

Mrs Gimson is a very nice little person with very brilliant blue eyes and does all she can think of to spoil me with comforts external and internal. I sit in a nice porch and have my meals and write etc. and in front of me is a great bank of yew trees beyond the lawn, with glimpses through to the wooded hill behind.’

Emily Gimson was very musical with a good singing voice. She used to play the piano for the Sunday night dances at the village hall at Sapperton. Margaret James, a pioneer of the English Folk Dance movement alongside Emily Gimson in the first decade of the 20^th century, described her as:

‘An upright, springing little lady, with very blue eyes, who had cycled – sometimes walked – miles to her class and would walk miles back again.’

Although many friends and colleagues commented on the pleasure they took in the company of children, Ernest and Emily Gimson were childless.

During the First World War Emily Gimson worked every day in a hospital kitchen. After her husband’s death in 1919 she continued to play a major role in village life and also learnt to spin and weave on a handloom. She exhibited a length of hand-woven tweed at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition in 1926. Music making was a constant passion and she promoted the use of bamboo pipes and one-stringed viols. She taught children both to make the latter and ‘to bring out a soft melodious note with a handmade bow’. She died in January 1941.