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 […]
How we went viral: a good story, good luck and good friends
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. It all started with a story that, five or ten years ago, would have remained within the four walls of the museum and gone no further: our assistant curator found a dead mouse in a Victorian mouse trap. The trap was behind a glass case in our store; it […]
How a mouse died in our Victorian mouse trap
If you’ve been on the internet for the past few days then you may have heard about the mouse which died in our Victorian mousetrap. We are very pleased and a little surprised to have gone viral, and since our original blog post have some updates on our rodent friend. For one thing, we think […]
Object handling with Addington School
A little while ago we welcomed students from The Addington School who came to find out what it’s like to work in a museum. Assistant Volunteer Coordinator Rhiannon really enjoyed introducing them to the world of museums, our collections and the role of the curator… Last term the museum welcomed a group of Further Education (FE) […]
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 […]
155-year old mouse trap claims its latest victim
After logging onto their computers today, staff here at the MERL were greeted by an unusual email from the Assistant Curator: ‘There appears to be a dead mouse in this mousetrap…’ It began. ‘…which is not described as being there on the database.’ So, this retired rodent had managed to sneak past University of Reading […]
An interview with: Rob Davies
Our volunteer Whitney has been exploring museum roles lately and spent a few minutes chatting to Volunteer Co-ordinator Rob Davies… 1. What is your job? I have two roles. The first is to look after the volunteers and my other role is to work on the activity plan which involves engaging with different communities around […]
Discovering the Landscape #22: Treasures Exhibition in our Staircase Hall
We’re delighted to share with you our current Staircase Hall exhibition: Discovering the Landscape: treasures from the collections of the Landscape Institute Where? Staircase Hall, Museum of English Rural Life, Redlands Road When? Wednesday 13 January – Friday 1 April 2016 (during our opening hours) What? This display will showcase a selection of important archive materials and books from […]
Community in focus: Katesgrove
As part of the Our Country Lives Activity Plan, we have been working with local Reading audiences to establish links with our neighbours and develop long and sustainable relationships. A ward we’ve spent a lot of time working with this year is Katesgrove. We’ve been working with the excellent organisation Katesgrove Community Association (KCA), a […]
Volunteers' Voice: 2015 round-up
Volunteer Coordinator Rob Davies looks back at a year of volunteering at MERL and the Special Collections. Another year, another year of fabulous volunteer projects; 2015 saw a whole host of new volunteer projects and successes. We also benefitted from the new post of Assistant Volunteer Coordinator, Rhiannon Watkinson, who has worked tirelessly with the volunteers. […]