Item 1983/2 - Three letters from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart and two letters from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, one with an attachment

6 items, paper

Three letters from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart and two letters from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, one with an attachment:
(a) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 7 April 1983, noting that [Antony] Gunstone had sent the photographs for his Southern museums volume on which he would like some help and asking IS to looks over the ones that concern Offa's coins since he had CEB's index cards for the Offa coins. He says that he has put his comments at the bottom of Gunstone's list and asks for the return of the photos and list. He reports on Michael Dolley's funeral and names some of the people who attended. He says that he explained IS's absence to the Dolley family and they replied that they had received "a charming letter" from him.
(b) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 14 April 1983, thanking IS for his comments on the Gunstone photos and noting that some of the points he made had completely escaped him. He discusses the "puzzling Offa from Southampton" and his struggles to come up with a satisfactory reading of it. He says that he now has photographs of the Lough Ennell coins, observing that the small fragment indeed looks like an Alfred BMC XXI. He notes that there are also "some intriguing St Edmunds (post-Cuerdale)", some "sword 'temple' type coins", which ha says are "probably continental", and about ten small fragments. He describes some unusual characteristics on some of the St Edmunds.
(c) letter from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Baldwin Crescent, London SE5, on 16 April 1983, thanking CEB for his letter and expressing satisfaction that his notes on the Gunstone coins were helpful. He says that he will be interested to see the photographs of the Lough Ennell coins and comments briefly on CEB's descriptions. There is an annotation in the upper right margin of the recto in CEB's hand to the effect that he answered the letter on 19 April, though there is no letter of this date from CEB among the papers of IS.
(d) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, two folios (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 6 May 1983, thanking IS for returning the photographs of the Lough Ennell coins with his comments on them. He says that he has received a copy of [Michael] Kenny's text from Dublin, which he will show to IS later. In the meantime, he says that he wants "to show the temple-type coins to Mark [Blackburn] who has been working on this series for Philip [Grierson]'s great catalogue". He also wants to discuss the St Edmunds with [Hugh] Pagan, who will be visiting him the next weekend. He reports on his successful visit to Chester, which he says has a good deal of 10th-century Anglo-Saxon material from the various Chester hoards. There is discussion of the way some of the hoards were originally handled and of Sylloge politics. He mentions plans for IS to visit later in the summer, Mark Blackburn's recent visit and, in a postscript, a memorial service for Michael [Dolley] in Belfast.
(e) letter from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from the House of Commons on 14 July 1983, enclosing his uncorrected draft on Offa (see item (f) below). The upper right margin carries an annotation in CEB's hand that reads "Ans 26/7", but the papers of IS contain no such reply.
(f) paper entitled "The London mint and the coinage of Offa", typescript (photocopy), 17 pages on 17 folios (recto only), one paragraph per page/folio, unattributed and undated, but referred to in Ian Stewart's letter of 14 July 1983 to Christopher Blunt (see item (e) above), and therefore attributable to Ian Stewart and datable to before 14 July.