Wellcome news for Our Country Lives!
Assistant Curator, Ollie Douglas shares some exciting project news… It has been hard keeping the news under wraps for the last few weeks, but it is very exciting to finally be able to share some news which will have a really significant impact on the Museum’s redevelopment. We are delighted to announce that The Wellcome Trust has […]
Focus on Collections: Dragons
To celebrate St George’s Day we decided to delve into the object collection for dragons. Dragons are normally something you would keep well away from Museum stores. Messy eaters, far too large and prone to setting things on fire, they are possibly the least ideal animal to have in a storehouse full of dry baskets, […]
Discovering the Landscape #14: 1500 books now catalogued!
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute 1500 items from the Landscape Institute library have now been integrated into our MERL library collection. These items include books and pamphlets, which have all 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 […]
Volunteers' Voice: Object handling
Volunteer Coordinator, Rob Davies, explains how museum volunteers are learning how to deliver object handling sessions. For the past 6 months we have been working with Museum’s Consultant Charlotte Dew to create, develop object handling sessions for visitors to the museum which will be delivered regularly by our volunteers when we reopen. We’ll also be […]
Discovering the Landscape #13: From garden space to masterplan
Seminar series round up: Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute Our captivating landscape inspired seminar series has drawn to an end. We’re delighted the series has been so well attended; a testament to the speakers and to the fascinating subject matter. If you attended any of the talks (or were unable to) and want to […]
Sew Engaging: Jane visits the Aman Group in Slough
Aman Group is a women’s only community group who meet at Manor Park Community Centre in Slough to learn from each other in friendship and participate in exercise, awareness sessions, health and beauty ideas and much more. In 2014, Sloughroots ‘Remedies-Remembered’ participants from the Aman Group got involved in a Quilt Project when they visited […]
Research post: X marks the spot
We’ve all been very busy researching nine new galleries for the Our Country Lives redevelopment, covering everything from wagon construction to rural fashion. What caught our eye recently, however, was a one-way, horse-drawn Butterfly plough. While delving into our accession files for its measurements we found this interesting little map tucked into a sheaf of […]
International Women's Day: The Women's Land Army
To celebrate International Women’s Day, University of Reading student Dylan Doran has been exploring the collection of Women’s Land Army objects here at the Museum. The Women’s Land Army (WLA) was created in 1915 to help farmers cope with the shortage of male labour as a result of the First World War. It was brought back […]
Family feedback
During February half term we invited families to see how the museum has changed since we closed and to find out about our plans. Alison Hilton, Marketing Officer explains how the family forum events were a great opportunity to try out some ideas for activities and get feedback from family visitors too. We didn’t realise […]
"I read an interesting book about…"
In this post Project Officer Felicity Williams explains how she has amassed huge amounts of specialist knowledge by reading some very obscure books in the name of research. My work on the Our Country Lives museum redevelopment has involved a lot of research – using collections but also MERL’s wonderful archive and library. Apparently, in […]