Thanks Justin,
The problem is obviously that I am not specifying a name for the style in the HttpWebRequest, hoping that GeoServer will resolve the name from the SLD itself 
How well do you know C#? 
Will figure it out and post my solution here once working.
Thank you so much for the direction - lost in the deep dark ocean to enlightened and on the right track in the space of 5 e-mails - thank you!
Cheers,
R
Justin Deoliveira wrote:
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