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4. Approaching The Keep


19 January 2017

From: Kent Barker
Sent: 19 January 2017 17:53
To: The Keep
Subject: Attention Christopher Whittick

Dear Mr Whittick
Mrs Heather Warne (archivist at Arundel Castle and council member of the Sussex Record Society) suggested I should contact you.
I’m currently in the early stages of doing the research for a biography of John Collier of Hastings.
In due course I would be grateful to study the Sayer Collection which you hold, but at this stage I am just trying to make sense of the sheer scale of the material available.
My starting point is Dr Richard Saville’s recent volume on the Letters of John Collier and I have sourced a copy of Volume 2 of Charles Lane Sayer’s works to purchase.  However finding a copy of volume 1 that I can either buy, borrow to study at home or photograph at an institution so I can study it later has, so far, eluded me.
In the meantime I am keen to obtain a copy of Mrs Warne’s catalogue from her 1966 Archive Diploma Dissertation, the original – or a carbon copy – of which I understand you hold.
Do you, by any chance, have a scan of that catalogue?  If not might I be able to photocopy or scan the original?  Mrs Warne was unsure how many pages it ran to (she only remembers persuading her poor mother to type it out from handwritten notes she’d made!)  Could you also let me know how many pages it is?
I would also be grateful for any other advice or pointers you might have for me at this stage.  I am aiming for an accessable  account of Collier’s life and times which will also provide a snapshot of the history of Hastings as well as a wider political and social account of the 1720s – 1750s.
I am a journalist by background, but have written a popular history of Smuggling at that period, focusing on the life of Gabriel Tomkins – smuggler and also revenue officer.
I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Many thanks
Kent Barker

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