Plough Monday
Plough Monday falls on the first Monday after the twelfth night of Christmas, which is also the night of the Epiphany. It marks the beginning of the English agricultural year and when ploughmen traditionally returned to the fields to prepare the Spring crops. Still celebrated in some parts of the the north and east of […]
New acquisition supported by the Art Fund
The Museum of English Rural Life has acquired 6 engravings for the collection, by print-maker Stanley Anderson RA (1884-1966). The acquisition was supported with the help of the Art Fund. We were the successful recipients of an Art Fund grant, enabling us to purchase the artworks at auction in December 2015. The Museum acquired a number […]
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 […]
Is this a garden or a teeny tiny farm?
Science engagement officer, Robyn Hopcroft, provides an update on our sugar beet growing project. It’s National Gardening Week, and at The MERL we’re lucky enough to have a beautiful garden with a large lawn, herb garden, woodland area, and several community growing projects. It’s a great space for experimentation with different plant varieties and one […]
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 […]
Students take over!
This update from our Activity Plan team is written by Rachael Rogers, who has been a member of the MERL Student Panel since September. Over the last year, members have been advising us and getting involved in many aspects of the museum’s redevelopment. Rachael writes about the current project which the panel has been managing: the design […]
#merlshopisopen : Christmas!
The Museum might be closed, but we’re not missing out on a bit of Christmas cheer in the MERL shop! Find out more about some exciting new ranges and future plans… Christmas is upon us! But here in the MERL shop, we’ve been ready for Christmas since early November. Out came the decorations, the beautiful […]
Discovering the Landscape #21: 2000 books now catalogued!
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Librarian: Landscape Institute 2000 items from the Landscape Institute library have now been integrated into our MERL library collection. All of these books have been cleaned, processed, catalogued and labelled and are available in our open access library. A small number of rare books received from the Landscape Institute have also been catalogued into our […]
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, […]