The Land Girl’s Lament: Tracking a mystery poet
This is the story of trying to find a lost land girl. It began when a poem recently arrived at the MERL (reference D DX2222, to be exact). It is written by a Land Girl who talks of both the perceptions and the reality of what a land girl does. The person who gave us […]
Town and Country: William Shenstone & Leasowes Park
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. How interdependent are town and country? How do they rely on each other, and where does one end and the other begin? It is a theme we’re exploring in great detail for Our Country Lives and, considering around 90% of English people live in urban areas, a […]
Stereotypes and slaughter: Why are horror films set in the countryside?
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. The countryside is terrifying. When you’re not being offered as human sacrifice you’re either being forced to knife-fight your own wife and son to the death, getting eaten by the local wildlife or being pushed off a cliff by a psychotic caravaner from Redditch. Or, at […]
Dog Carts: Travel in style
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. In my mind the idea of a dog cart is fairly funny. The idea of, say, a Pug or a French Bulldog pulling along bespoke, miniature carts is absurd, endearing and yet a little unsettling, like performing animals at the zoo. They are also some of my favourite objects […]
Coopering in the MERL collections
Since May I’ve been working on the Reading Engaged project to research content for the new galleries which will form part of MERL’s redevelopment project, Our Country Lives. True to my passions as ever, I’ve been taking the opportunity to focus on researching craft, as we’re hoping to dedicate a large part of one of […]
Our Boneshaking connection to cycling
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. At the moment of writing, 198 lycra-clad men from across the world are cycling through the Cambridgeshire countryside. They’re riding the best bicycles in the world (with the best thighs in the world), aiming for a finish line at Buckingham Palace, the prize of a yellow jersey and a […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: Threadneedle Street biscuits
In case you need biscuit-baking inspiration, we’ve been digging in our library and archives for examples of biscuit recipes you might not have come across before. Our Librarian has managed to find several interesting recipes in the rare books collection, such as Lemon biscuits and Drop biscuits from ‘The London Art of Cookery’ by John […]
Volunteers' Voice #12: A tale of rural protest in Berkshire
Written by Kaye Gough, Volunteer. Well, we did it! After months of discussions and script conferences; research teams trawling through local archives; rehearsals, sourcing costumes and music, the MERL Players presented two performances of our tableau Performing Protest: Riots against technological change in the 19th Century to full houses at the Museum on Saturday 22nd […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: Littlehampton Honey & Fig Biscuits
The second biscuit recipe of this week, by Alison Hilton, MERL Marketing Officer Sometimes I really love social media! We’d never have come across this week’s recipes had it not been for a #ThrowbackThursday image we posted last week on Twitter. As it was #BritishSandwichWeek, the picture was of recipes for sandwich spreads from a […]
Name that beer!
Enter our competition to name a new beer for the MERL Village Fete! You may remember Adam’s recent post on brewing, in which he mentioned the beer tent at the MERL Village Fete, taking place on May 31st. We have had a beer tent at the Fete for a few years now, with a selection […]