Weekly What's On: June 9th to 15th
You can find full details of all our forthcoming events and activities in our What’s On and MERL Families guides, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar Universities Week 2014 Research in Action: Buckets , baskets and boots: Sensory Objects showcase Monday 9th June, 12.30-3pm, free, […]
Volunteers' Voice #13: Volunteers' Week 2014
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator. This week is the time of the year we stop to think about and celebrate volunteering across the country, whether you are a volunteer yourself, an organisation who works with them, or indeed is entirely run by volunteers, this is the week in which we say thank you on […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: Threadneedle Street biscuits
In case you need biscuit-baking inspiration, we’ve been digging in our library and archives for examples of biscuit recipes you might not have come across before. Our Librarian has managed to find several interesting recipes in the rare books collection, such as Lemon biscuits and Drop biscuits from ‘The London Art of Cookery’ by John […]
Volunteers' Voice #12: A tale of rural protest in Berkshire
Written by Kaye Gough, Volunteer. Well, we did it! After months of discussions and script conferences; research teams trawling through local archives; rehearsals, sourcing costumes and music, the MERL Players presented two performances of our tableau Performing Protest: Riots against technological change in the 19th Century to full houses at the Museum on Saturday 22nd […]
Weekly What's On: May 27th to June 1st
You can find full details of all our forthcoming events and activities in our What’s On and MERL Families guides, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar Guided tour Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays, 3-3.45pm Free, booking advisable Let our fully trained tour guides tell you the […]
Food Glorious Food at the MERL Village Fete!
Food Glorious Food at Uni Museum Fete Visitors to the Museum of English Rural Life Village Fete on Saturday 31st May should get ready to have their tastebuds tempted. The theme for this year’s family friendly Fete is food. On the menu are cookery demonstrations, food science experiments, food-inspired craft, stories, and trails, as well […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: Littlehampton Honey & Fig Biscuits
The second biscuit recipe of this week, by Alison Hilton, MERL Marketing Officer Sometimes I really love social media! We’d never have come across this week’s recipes had it not been for a #ThrowbackThursday image we posted last week on Twitter. As it was #BritishSandwichWeek, the picture was of recipes for sandwich spreads from a […]
Name that beer!
Enter our competition to name a new beer for the MERL Village Fete! You may remember Adam’s recent post on brewing, in which he mentioned the beer tent at the MERL Village Fete, taking place on May 31st. We have had a beer tent at the Fete for a few years now, with a selection […]
Our Country Lives update: Michael Eavis's French wellies
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. Yesterday we picked up our newest acquisition: a pair of wellies. It seems strange that a museum of English rural life wouldn’t have this icon of the countryside already in the collection, but they never really came onto our radar as an endangered object. The welly has never needed […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: 1940s jam biscuits
By Shira Kilgallon, UoR History Student and MERL Library Volunteer This week’s biscuit recipe comes from Ministry of Food pamphlets found in the MERL Library collections; two pamphlets have been used to give you a recipe with a twist (and a bit of a challenge!!). This particular twist is definitely for the more experimental among […]