Sew Engaging! The first 'man stitch'
In this week’s Sew Engaging! project update, Jane visits Cotswold Woollen Weavers at Filkins and gets the first ‘man stitch’ It was dark. I got up this morning and lit the wood burner, glad of my sweater, the brown one I was wearing to launch the ‘Sew Engaging’ project at the Riverside Inn on Valentine’s […]
Our Country Lives update: Bringing our wagons down to earth
Alongside finalising gallery layouts, coming up with exciting ideas for interactive displays and filling in foundations for our extensions, our biggest update for you this week is the removal of our wagons from their monorail. We managed to finish the job in one day with the help of a specialist removal company, a fork-lift truck […]
Volunteers' Voice: Student Volunteering Week
We celebrate Student Volunteering Week with a post by Katie Wise who talks about the benefits of volunteering and the opportunities that her experience at MERL has brought. As a student on a humanities course, one thing I have a lot of is time. What’s a good way to spend it? Instead of pigging out watching […]
Discovering the Landscape #12: Brenda Colvin
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute Brenda Colvin (1897-1981) was a founder member of the Institute of Landscape Architects and its first female president (elected in 1951). In anticipation of FOLAR’s (Friends of the Landscape Library and Archive at Reading) study day focusing on Brenda Colvin here at MERL on Saturday 21 March, […]
Sew Engaging!
Our new ‘Sew Engaging!’ outreach project has been launched on the banks of the River Thames at Lechlade, Gloucestershire. The project has been designed by textile artist, Jane McCutchan, and funded by The Ashley Family Foundation. Jane holds a Barnett Bequest Fellowship at MERL, and a doctorate from the University of Reading, and uses our collections in […]
Your country lives and your museum
Assistant Curator, Dr Ollie Douglas traces the Museum’s history of building links with communities and invites readers to get involved in our current project In the 1950s, when the Museum of English Rural Life was first established, countryside people were experiencing a period of massive change. Of course, the lives of people who live and […]
Volunteers voice: Meet Rhiannon
Hello, I’m Rhiannon Watkinson the new Assistant Volunteer Coordinator here at MERL. Having been in the post a little over a month now, and no longer getting quite so lost in the maze that is the museum, it seems time to introduce myself. I’m a Reading local and have just returned to the area after […]
Discovering the Landscape #11: Great new seminar series
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute Great news! Our fascinating new seminar series entitled ‘Discovering the Landscape’ kicks off on Tuesday 10 February with an overview of the collections (‘From garden space to masterplan: The Landscape Institute collections at MERL’) with our archivist Caroline Gould and landscape architect Annabel Downs. In 2013, MERL received […]
Discovering the Landscape #10: Fascinating rare books in the LI collection
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute This months ‘Discovering the Landscape’ looks at some interesting new additions to our MERL Library Reserve collection, drawing upon links between the Landscape Institute collections and our existing MERL and Special Collections. We received several fascinating rare books from the library of the Landscape Institute. Here we […]
Democracy Day: Parliamentary Firsts
Project Officer, Felicity McWilliams, spotted an opportunity to share some of the research she’s been doing for the new galleries… Today is BBC Democracy Day, the 750th anniversary of the first ever parliament of elected officials at Westminster. Known as the ‘January Parliament’, it was called in 1265 by the Earl of Leicester, Simon de […]