in 1973 the tate acquired a large proportion of the spencer family archives. these included spencer's notebooks, sketchbooks and correspondence including the weekly letters he wrote to his sister florence, while he was stationed in salonika during the first world war. spencer was a prolific writer of lists and the archive contains several that offer insights to specific paintings plus other material such as lists of rooms for the church-house project, lists of plants in his own paintings and even a list of the jewellery he bought for patrica preece. other correspondence by spencer, some of which also dates from the first world war, is held in the archives of the stanley spencer gallery in cookham. tate britain holds the largest collection of spencer works in the world, but the largest collection on display at any one time is at the stanley spencer gallery.