Old Town Traders
Robert’s Rummage
By Des Wilson
The little shop at No 68 the High Street is packed. Curiosity-seekers crowd the narrow aisles between piles of ‘stuff’. They come from all over Sussex and further afield. There’s a woman who has come all the way from Berlin to buy a silver candlestick. Some – at least 10 a day – are other traders, seeking to replenish their stock. And everyone knows Robert, the owner, collector and trader. And Robert knows everyone.
The tall, talkative 80-year-old, a former chef and hotel manager, is the doyen of the Old Town traders. He took over a fish and chip shop in 1990 after 10 years in Africa, filled it with over 10,000 second-hand books, items of crockery, cutlery, old children’s toys, maps, tools, wine glasses and decanters, cameras, postcards, and all sorts of bits and pieces, and called it ‘Robert’s Rummage’. The place is filled with laughter as he banters with the men and flatters the ladies. His personality dominates the shop. Robert’s philosophy is displayed on the wall: “It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.” He buys and sells, 50 percent to the trade and at least 70 percent to locals, but when someone wanders in to offer him an item free, he puts money in his charity box and donates it to causes like the Ukraine Appeal.
With an eye for a bargain, Robert is a familiar figure at auctions in London and more locally, at Battle and Redhill, and will spend up to £2,000 each time, not that there’s much space for his purchases in the shop: they overflow into an alley alongside. He has opened a second High Street shop, ‘Robert’s Curios’, mainly to sell some of his vast collection of non-European art books.
Robert is a compulsive collector – he has 5,000 books at home, travel books and cookery books – and is also a student of the history of slavery. One of his most valuable books, worth at least £3,000, is Wilberforce’s 1807 edition of The Abolition of the Slave Trade. Lecturing at colleges on anthropology, this is a man who loves to talk.
Give him an audience and he’s unstoppable – the shop more like a theatre than a place to trade, with Robert unquestionably the star.
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