Dr Katarzyna Wagner spent one month at the Trust’s house in Highgate, London for the month of July 2018.

“I had a great opportunity to visit London thank to The Robert Anderson Research Charitable Trust. I spent two weeks there. My stay was successful. I worked very hard in the National Archives in Kew and found sources that will complete my research connected to the history of Warsaw. As I thought, I found records assembled by the State Paper Office, including papers of the Secretaries of State up to 1782, in which one can find completely unknown reports of news from Warsaw and Poland from the 17th and 18th centuries, and papers of the period of the Polish-Swedish wars (the so-called Swedish Deluge 1655-1660 as well as the Great Northern War 1700-1721). There were also maps of Warsaw (Domestic Records of the Public Record Office, Gifts, Deposits, Notes and Transcripts collection) which were were unknown to me previously, as well as military plans printed in the second half of the 18th century in Berlin.

I also looked closely at the collections held at Sir Joan Soane’s Museum. There, I found 116 architectural drawings of Giovanni Battista Gisleni which are unknown in Poland, and drawings of Constante Tencalli, which are priceless. They present the projects of the Vasa Forum in Warsaw and unknown views of the city in the 17th century. They really should be edited and published in Poland. This material can only be found in London, and my visit was crucial for this reason.”