MERL at Tractor World Show
Written by Caroline Gould, Deputy University Archivist MERL was invited to the Spring Tractor World Show which took place weekend by the group creating the 80th anniversary display of Ransomes MG crawlers and implements. The display, formed of around 35 Ransomes, won best in show! MERL was keen to attend to promote the archives that are held at the Museum. […]
Reading Readers – Hilary Matthews
This month, University of Reading PhD student Hilary Matthews tells us about her research into livestock portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. As a Reading University PhD student, I am looking at how the paintings and prints of livestock in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century functioned within the society that produced them. […]
Discovering the Landscape #23: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson
Guest post written by Penny Beckett, Chair of FOLAR MERL is to host FOLAR’s third AGM and Study Session: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson – Celebrating mid 20C Design on Saturday 19 March 2016. MERL staff will mount an exhibition of related New Town material selected from the Landscape Institute’s archive and from other […]
Exploring the Beale Family Farm Diaries
Written by Sharon Maxwell, Archivist (Cataloguing & Projects) One of our recently catalogued collections is a set of 41 farm diaries belonging to the Beale Family of River Hall Farm, Biddenden, Kent. The diaries document the daily lives of Richard Beale Snr and Richard Beale Jnr during the years 1791 until 1834. Richard Beale Snr […]
Explore Your Archive: Interview with Guy Baxter, University Archivist
Whitney, our marketing volunteer, has been continuing her exploration of the world of archives in an interview with University Archivist, Guy Baxter… What is your job title and what do you do within the museum? I’m the University archivist. I’m responsible for the University’s archive collections. Most of the archives I look after are the ones […]
Discovering the Landscape: Student bursary winners announced
We are delighted to announce that Moa Carlsson and Tianyi Jiang have been awarded Landscape Student Travel Bursaries. The purpose of the two student travel bursaries is to enable students to access collections held at Reading related to landscape, including landscape design, management and architecture. Moa is a doctoral student at the Department of Architecture […]
Explore Your Archive: Rats in the archives
Professor of Social and Cultural History at Leeds Trinity University, Karen Sayer is our Gwyn E. Jones Fellow exploring rat control in British agriculture. She’s spent a lot of time looking for rats in our collections… The MERL archive is full of interesting animal records; as you might expect, there are papers, pamphlets and books on livestock […]
Explore Your Archive: Interview with our Photographic Assistant
Continuing her exploration of the world of archiving, Whitney talks to Photographic Assistant, Caroline Benson about her role. 1. What is your specific role within archiving and what aspects interest you the most? My role is Photographic Assistant and I deal with all the photographic inquiries and income generation. I licence images for use in books, […]
Explore Your Archive: People Stories – Jean Young
One of the many topics we will be exploring in the museum’s new displays is rural healthcare. Our latest blog by Abbey School students focuses on the story of a 1940s District Nurse, Jean Young. Jean Young was a District Nurse/Midwife. This ambiguous job title in fact entirely sums up the role; for the first few weeks […]
Explore Your Archive: Animating the Evacuee Archive
Sonya Chenery is currently undertaking a PhD project – funded as part of the university’s Collections-Based Research programme – to engage with, intervene in and animate aspects of this archive within a range of publicly accessible spaces. We are delighted that Sonya has agreed to share an insight into her work in progress as part […]