Lewes History Group

A selection of Virginia Woolf’s reading and research notebooks that are in The Keep’s Special Collections can now be accessed online.

WoolfNotes.com provides images of Virginia Woolf’s lifetime reading and research notes. At the core of the project is the presentation of 67 Reading Notebooks – 33 from The Keep, 33 from the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library and one from the Beinecke Library at Yale – accompanied by the text of Brenda Silver’s summary of each one.

It also includes research notecards from the Leonard Woolf papers compiled for his book ‘Empire and Commerce in Africa (1920)’.

According to the website: “This large collection of reading and research notes corrects the myth (partly generated by Woolf herself) that she was uneducated. It shows how her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, was indebted to extensive and rigorous research on social, historical, economic, political, and imperial issues.”

Access to East Sussex probate records just got easier with their launch online on Ancestry. As well as wills, these fascinating records include inventories and other associated records which give an insight into the social status of the testator, their property, and details of other family members.

Ancestry scanned The Keep’s probate records as part of a wider digitisation project with West Sussex Records Office. These records have now gone live online.

Access to Ancestry is free at The Keep and all libraries across East and West Sussex. You can also find Ancestry online at www.ancestry.co.uk.

On 18 May 2023 Dr John Kay of the Lewes History Group, and the Ringmer History Study Group, was given the Outstanding Individual Contributor Award for 2023 from the British Association for Local History (BALH).

This prestigious honour is awarded to a local historian who has made a significant voluntary contribution to the subject in their locality and John certainly fulfils the criterion.

John Kay has unstinting enthusiasm and wide local knowledge, past and present, of both Lewes and the environs. He was especially singled out for his 40 years of producing monthly bulletins for first Ringmer History Study Group, then Lewes History Group too; the co-founding of both societies; arranging monthly talks; his responding usefully to other researchers’ enquiries from around the world; as well as his many other voluntary roles in the community, including Chairmanship of Ringmer Parish Council from 2010 to 2016.

Prior to his retirement, Dr Kay was a Reader in Biochemistry at the University of Sussex, Associate Dean of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and previously the Director of the Centre for Medical Research. Living in Ringmer with wife Anna, he is also a published author in both history and biomedical journals.

Congratulations to John on being presented with this major award.

John Kay