Weekly What's On: 6th to 11th May
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 MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside The origins of the First World War: an historical perspective […]
Crowning the May Queen – origins of a folk tradition
Inspired by our seminar series earlier this year, MERL Curator, Isabel Hughes, reflects on a timely example of intangible heritage from her childhood. Earlier this year, MERL hosted a series of seminars under the banner of Untouchable England. Inspired by the fact that the MERL collections may soon be packed away temporarily as part of […]
Focus on Collections #5: Brewing Beer
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. England is ale, and ale is England. It is an old adage, and people grasping at a description of ‘English culture’ very often reach for the low-hanging fruit of ale, pubs and Morris dancing (when they’re not already listing smocks, village greens and other aspects of the rural idyll). […]
Weekly What's On: April 28th to May 4th
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 MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside Reading’s First World War Tuesday 29th April, 1-2pm Free. Drop-in […]
Biscuit recipe of the week: Anzac biscuits
Since the recent launch of our Village Fete Biscuit Bake-off , we have started publishing a biscuit recipe each week to inspire you to practise baking biscuits and to enter the competition at the Fete on May. Our Librarians and archivists are digging out some interesting recipes from the MERL collections, and we’d also welcome […]
Weekly What's on: 22nd to 27th 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 tour Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays, 3-3.45pm Free, booking advisable Let our fully trained tour guides tell you the […]
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 […]