Rural Reads Review #3 – Waterland by Graham Swift

Robert Davies, reviews our October ‘Rural Read’… The book for MERL’s Rural Reads monthly book club last month was Waterland by Graham Swift. The book is set in the Fens and covers a time period of 200 years, successfully bringing the fens to life for the reader with vivid descriptions and endearing characters. For the scale […]

Picture of the month #5: Artist in butter

Caroline Benson, MERL’s Photographic Assistant has come across a most fascinating craft (which, sadly, definitely isn’t one which will be on display at our Traditional Craft Fair!) We didn’t quite squeeze this particular ‘Picture of the month’ into October, but I think it’s worth the wait!! This month’s photographs are from a collection recently deposited […]

MERL Traditional Craft Fair, Nov 9th 2013

Greta Bertram, MERL Project officer and Heritage Crafts Association trustee, explains how our Traditional Craft Fair connects with MERL’s extensive craft-related collections… It’s nearly time for the annual MERL Traditional Craft Fair, and this year we’ve got fifteen of our most skilled local craftspeople exhibiting (and in some cases demonstrating) throughout the Museum. As ever, we […]

Hot off the lorry: the Landscape Institute archive and library has arrived!

written by Nancy Fulford, Project Archivist. We are really excited to welcome the archive, library and associated architect’s collections of the Landscape Institute at MERL. Earlier this year the Institute decided that we would be the new home for these collections which have largely been in storage and inaccessible since 2008. The Landscape Institute  was […]

Project news: Rural images discovered: Colin Shaw

written by Nancy Fulford, Project Archivist. A couple of weeks ago marked the end of the Rural Images Discovered Project which has seen over 15,000 prints digitised, and many more negatives and prints catalogued from the John Tarlton, Farmers Weekly, Peter Adams and Colin Shaw photographic collections. I came to the Colin Shaw collection towards the […]

The MERL Classification – what it is and why we’re updating it

Project Officer, Greta Bertram, explains more about the work she has been doing to revise the MERL Classification over the last few months. Classification systems are used by museums to organise data about their collections. The MERL Classification was devised by John Higgs, the first Keeper at MERL, in the 1950s. It was based on […]

Volunteers' Voice #6 – Student volunteers

At the beginning of a new University term, Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator, talks about student volunteers at the University Museums and Special Collections. It is the start of the academic year which for us at the University Museums means we have an influx of eager students willing to volunteer. With the current economic climate and […]

My Favourite Object #4: 'By the Roadside' cigarette cards

written by Felicity McWilliams, Project Officer. Quite a few of my favourite objects in the museum were collected as part of the Collecting 20th Century Rural Cultures project. The project began in 2008, with the aim of acquiring objects for the collections which build a picture of the twentieth century English countryside. A wide variety of […]

Our Country Lives Update

written by Sophia Mirchandani, Katie Norgrove and Jocelyn Goddard, consultants working on Our Country Lives We are founder members of Cultural Consulting Network, which provides professional consultancy services to the heritage and arts sectors. Specialising in research, evaluation, project development, funding and grants, we work closely with our clients to provide intelligent and workable solutions […]