Volunteers' Voice: Alessandra

This week is Volunteers’ Week and we are celebrating the wonderful work done by our volunteers and thanking them for all the hours and effort they put into making the museum the best it can possibly be. To showcase our brilliant volunteers every day this week we will be posting blogs written by the volunteers […]

Volunteers' Voice: Celebrating Volunteers Week!

Assistant Volunteer Coordinator, Rhiannon Watkinson introduces this week’s celebration of volunteers at MERL… At The Museum of English Rural Life we could not function without the hard work and dedication of our amazing volunteers. Around 120 volunteers ensure that the museum not only runs smoothly but is a place full of passion and friendly faces. […]

Sew Engaging at the Rising Sun

Dr Jane McCutchan is back in Reading for the latest stage of  the Sew Engaging project… Drop in at Rising Sun Arts Centre, near the Royal Berks Hospital on a Thursday morning, and you are close to Heaven. Eleven o’clock and the clients have stopped for a tea break.  The chair under Dennis (not his real […]

Discovering the Landscape #15: The Chelsea Flower Show

Written by Adam Lines, Reading Room Supervisor  As the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is on (19-23 May 2015) is on – what better time to delve into our Landscape Institute collection for some garden inspiration! These beautiful images show a Sculpture Garden for Chelsea Flower Show designed by Preben Jakobsen (1934-2012) in 1982. Preben Jakobsen was an award […]

Rural Reads review: Far from the Madding Crowd

As the Rural Reads Plus book group is now taking inspiration from the University of Reading’s Special Collections as well as the Museum of English Rural Life, our recent reviews have been published on the Special Collections blog, but this one takes us back to our roots…! Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator, is clearly a fan! […]

What have we been up to? Our Country Lives Top 10 #2

We’ve been very busy over the last few months, so here’s our latest Top 10 run-down of what’s been happening… 1. Bringing the wagons down from their overhead positions was a delicate and pretty scary job for our conservator and team of specialists. See how it went. 2. We’ve grown! The extension to our welcome area now […]

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 […]