Picture of the month #9: Lambs

After watching ‘Lambing Live’, seeing lambs in fields on my way to work and  cute pictures of lambs from @herdyuk, @farmersoftheuk and many more, every time I log on to Twitter, lambs seemed to be the obvious seasonal subject matter for our Picture of the Month post this time. One picture from our collections immediately […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Rich Traveller biscuits

Welcome to our series of biscuit recipes to inspire you to take part in the Biscuit Bake-off at the MERL Village Fete on May 31st! At the recent launch of the Biscuit Bake-off, University student Deiniol Pritchard experimented with a Huntley & Palmers recipe for ‘University Rusks’, which everyone at the special Todder Time event […]

My Favourite Object #6: 'Check Rein' and Blacksmithing Tools

This post was written by Christina Avramakis, Project Assistant for our Sense of Place project. My role at MERL has been to accession and catalogue new objects coming into the Museum, and so I have been very lucky to get up close and personal with many interesting objects and stories. For this reason, it was difficult to […]

Weekly What's On: 14th – 16th April

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 Easter Closure Please note that the Museum is open on Tuesday  & Wednesday this week. University Easter closure means […]

MERL on Twitter #2: #MuseumWeek & beyond

The dust has settled and I’ve just about managed to catch up on the work that was sidelined as I spent #museumweek glued to Twitter! It seems to have been a hugely successful initiative according to @TwitterUk themselves in their summary, and I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to try out some new ideas.  Coverage was […]

Student Spotlight #4: Joseph Arch hand casts

Maria Rabbani is a 2nd year Archaeology student at the University of Reading. The objects which I have chosen are the white plaster casts of Joseph Arch’s right and left hand. The length of the casts is 18cm and their breadth (across the knuckles) is 12cm. His hands look small and delicate, which may be […]

Student Spotlight #3: Lave Net

Mubariz Rabbani is a second year Archaeology student at the University of Reading. I have chosen to write about a lave fishing (pictured below) net as the fishing industry is an important part of the British economy as well as a contemporary issue, as increased fishing may result in environmental damage and may affect the […]

Discovering the Landscape #4: Inaugural Meeting of the LI Friends Group

Guest post written by Penny Beckett, Chair of the LI Archive Friend’s Group As followers of this blog will be aware, the Landscape Institute transferred its archive to MERL in October of last year and is currently supporting MERL financially to work on the Institute’s collections and make them accessible. As part of the terms […]

Weekly What's On: 7th to 13th April

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 tours Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays, 3-3.45pm (Please note that we are closed on Thurs 17th April and over […]

MERL Village Fete: MERL Toddlers take the biscuit!

This is the first of a series of posts from the Village Fete team on the run-up to this year’s event, by Alison Hilton, MERL Marketing Officer. Preparations for the 2014 MERL Village Fete are well underway and it’s exciting to be able to start sharing some of the new features of the event, which […]