annual report 2007–2008 · 2008. 10. 31. · annual report 2007–2008 a review of merl activity,...

Annual report2007–2008A review of MERL activity, October 2007 – September 2008

The Museum of English Rural Life is part of the University Museums and Special Collections Service

MERL Annual report #06.indd 1MERL Annual report #06.indd 1 30/10/2008 12:46:3630/10/2008 12:46:36

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MERL Annual Report 2007–2008

ContentsComplete list of exhibitions 4

Learning and events programme 4

New acquisitions 6

Documentation 6

Conservation 7

Research 7

MERL research seminars 8

Audience development 8

Audience figures 9

Undergraduate and volunteer programme 9

Staff activities 10

Publications 10

Papers presented 11

Above left: Furniture maker, Chris Cattle, planting ‘grown’ stools in the MERL garden in March.

Middle: A pupil from Alder Bridge school enjoying butter she made herself during a ‘Where does food come from?’ session.

Above right: Visitors can now enjoy trying on beautiful replica smocks, hats and clogs in the Museum.

Front cover: Douglas Andrews, a Sussex wheelwright, was the subject of one of the rural crafts fi lms.



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Rural crafts have been a recurring theme of the year, centring on the exhibition ‘Rural crafts: take ten’ that marked the conclusion of a two year Designation Challenge Fund project to record traditional rural crafts in action today.

A large body of new material was generated as a result including ten professionally-made fi lms of craftspeople at work up and down the country.

Short versions of these were featured in the exhibition and have subsequently been added to the permanent displays. They can also be viewed online. A series of craft workshops for adults was run in conjunction with the exhibition where participants could try a variety of activities from blacksmithing and hurdlemaking to quilting. Crafts and craft demonstrations were then the focus of the highly successful MERL Spring Spectacular which was held in the garden in June and attended by over 600 people. As part of the Heritage Open Days scheme in September, MERL teamed up with Bracknell Forest Borough Council to run a Rural Craft & Folk Day at Lily Hill Park.

Annual reportOctober 2007 – September 2008

Craftspeople and fi lm makers involved in the Rural Crafts Today project gathered at MERL in March for the opening of the exhibition.


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Complete list of exhibitionsGoing green: sustainability past and presentThrough to the end of October 2007

A small world: scale models and miniatures from the MERL collections6th November 2007 – 24th February 2008

Rural crafts: take ten11th March 2008 – 22nd June 2008

Food, glorious food!1st July 2008 – 28th September 2008

Learning and events programmeTo list just a few, from Apple Day in October to The Big Draw, Halloween and Christmas activities, a family sleepover as part of Museums and Galleries Month in May, and a series of lunchtime talks, the range of events and diversity of participants continues to develop across a broad front. Family events during the holiday periods have proved particularly popular and the themed activities available in the garden have played their part. A new addition was the introduction from March of regular parent and toddler sessions on Friday afternoons. Sessions are based on a recent study into young children’s access to quality cultural activities and include singing and craft activities linked to the collections.

A choice of seven different sessions are now available for visiting primary schools using the collections, the garden and the Victorian building for a variety of history and science topics, and a programme on the Agricultural Revolution has been developed for Key Stage 3 History. We have worked with the Agricultural Department on a GCSE dairying session as part of Food and Farming Year, with Wantage Museum and two special schools on a local Learning Clusters project and with the University’s Institute of Education to provide sessions for teacher training students.

Attendees at the Apple Day event in October ‘07 looking at the 1885 Herefordshire Pomona.

Family picnic – an image from the summer exhibition ‘Food, glorious food!’



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Below left: A pupil from Southcote school in Reading writes down his thoughts about the countryside at the end of his school visit in March.

Below middle: A toddler gets stuck in to some ‘Cornfl our slime’ at a kitchen science workshop during the summer. MERL now runs parent and toddler sessions every Friday.

Far right: A group of families creating a giant felt wall-hanging inspired by the garden at a workshop this summer. The end result is now on display in the Museum.

Left: A participant at one of the adult rural crafts workshops gets to have a go at blacksmithing. Image by Oliver Dungey.

Above: Guests enjoying ‘Poetry in the garden’, readings by Two Rivers Press poets on a beautiful evening in July.

Above right: Traditional games are now available on the new games trolley for families to play in the garden. Image by Filip Gierlinski.


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New acquisitionsThese include a working model of a threshing machine made c.1880 for marketing purposes by Humphries & Co of Pershore, Worcs, manufacturers of threshing machines and other farm equipment. Dr David Drummond, formerly chief scientist at the Central Science Laboratory, MAFF, and recent author of British Mouse Traps and their Makers has given his collection of historic traps to MERL.

steam engine builders and agricultural engineers Clayton & Shuttleworth of Lincoln; records dating from 1869 from the animal medicine specialists Walter Gregory & Co Ltd.

The library of the Tools and Trades History Society is now being housed as a discrete collection within the special collections part of the MERL library. It is primarily a collection of books tracing the history of tools and tool making, but also includes some trade literature and a small number of videos.

DocumentationThe Lottery-funded Heavy Metal project, which has brought full cataloguing to large parts of the agricultural engineering archive, was successfully completed during the year. A new grant from the Joint Information Systems Committee is now enabling a start to be made on the systematic digitising and cataloguing of the glass negative collections from the journals Farmers Weekly and Farmer and Stockbreeder.

Funding has been agreed and preparatory work begun for the transfer over the coming year of database records to a new collections management system that will ensure MERL stays in tune with current user requirements and international standards.

The Evacuee and War Child archive has been acquired, via Dr Martin Parsons, Director of the Research Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies at the University.

Other notable acquisitions include the archive of the Land Settlement Association which was formed in 1934 to provide smallholdings for the unemployed; the William McCance collection of photographs, taken mostly on a farm at Henley in the 1930s and 40s; fi fteen albums of photographs from the renowned

Traction engine owner, Roy Green, is one of eight volunteers who completed the ‘Heavy Metal’ steam engine archive project this year.

Portable steam engine, 1890, by Clayton & Shuttleworth. These works photographs would subsequently be used to produce catalogue illustrations.



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ConservationAlongside the routine treatments there are active projects, such as one to conserve a 1950s crawler tractor, and preventative measures, including one to reduce the high levels of natural light coming into the gallery. With assistance from volunteers, a programme to improve and upgrade the way that the costume and textile collections are housed has been completed. It included the adaptation of existing storage capacity, installation of new units and use of better materials. A small grant from the Museum Development Service has allowed a sample condition audit of the archive collections to be carried out with a view to producing a longer term conservation action plan.

Two museum workers from elsewhere in the region have spent periods of training with the MERL Conservator as part of the Renaissance South East Sharing Skills scheme.

ResearchDavid Viner used his year as MERL Research Fellow to continue with and to write up his work on farm wagons in collections across the country. He also carried out a major survey of craft material held by museums in England as part of the Rural Crafts Today project. The results of this investigation were incorporated into the project report, available also online, and contribute to our understanding of what constitutes the Distributed National Collection of rural material held by museums. Dr Clare Griffi ths from Sheffi eld University has been appointed as the Sir John Higgs MERL Research Fellow for 2008–9 and will be concentrating her attention on the photographic collections to look at the changing image of farmers and farming over the course of the twentieth century.

Professor Andrew Godley, of the University’s School of Management and former MERL Research Fellow, was awarded £500,000 from the ESRC for a project to continue his researches – in part based on the MERL library and archive – on the development of the modern chicken industry.

In addition to seeing two books published within weeks of each other over the summer, Dr Jonathan Brown has been awarded one of the Museums Association’s Monument Fellowships which are aimed at capturing collections knowledge held by experienced individuals who are retiring from museums. His fellowship will focus on transferring his expertise on the Museum’s engineering collections to resources that will enhance their use and accessibility for researchers.

A new research and collecting project on twentieth century rural culture has received a grant of £100,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and will gather momentum in the coming year. Its purpose is to create, through the purchase of targeted acquisitions, an impression of how the countryside was perceived, and how it perceived itself, over the course of the last century.

Volunteers, Betty Simmonds and Jan Butler, have worked on the textile conservation project, stitching new calico coat hangers.


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MERL research seminarsAutumn 2007Richard Tranter (MERL Fellow): ‘The effect of the 1921–38 agricultural recession on farming on the Downlands of Berkshire’

Professor John Allen: ‘Berkshire’s 19thc churches and chapels, a geological perspective’

Dr Philip Conford: ‘Growth and Change in the Organic Movement, 1946–2006’

Spring 2008Dr John Martin: ‘The bleak mid-winter of 1947: its impact on the rural sector’

Professor Ted Collins: ‘The Draught Ox in English agriculture 1750–1964’

Dr Roy Brigden: ‘Rural Crafts Today: people, traditions, skills, and places’

Dr Marina Moskowitz: ‘Broadcasting seeds on the nineteenth century American landscape’

Audience developmentThe twice-yearly What’s On guide to MERL events is distributed very widely, helped by our in-house mailing list on the Artifax database, and has become the main pillar of promotional activity. It is now assisted by a re-designed MERL website more geared for marketing purposes and capable of handling online bookings and enquiries. The University has made a short video of MERL for its own website and new initiatives have seen us take advantage of bus shelter poster advertising and a local radio campaign over the summer. Steadily rising visitor numbers and growing popularity of the events programme culminated in August being the busiest month since the move to Redlands Road.

The Museum’s meeting room facilities are used routinely by a variety of organisations and in the past year have hosted conferences of the Rural Museums Network, the Tools and Trades History Society and The Inter-War Rural History Research Group.

The re-designed MERL website www.reading.ac.uk/merl

A snowdrift during the ‘bleak mid-winter’ of 1947.

Families taking part in MERL’s fi rst sleepover, as part of Museums and Galleries month.



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Undergraduate and volunteer programmeThe HEFCE funded CETL-AURS scheme has continued to fund the development of modules which engage students with the MERL collections. It has now successfully completed its second year with a rise in total student numbers from 55 to 96. There are now three museum and material culture studies modules which recruit students from the departments of Archaeology, History, Classics and History of Art and Architecture. For 2007/8 a new subject specifi c module called Public Understanding of the Countryside drew students from Geography and Agriculture. Students from the School of Agricultural Policy and Development have also attended workshops on Animal Science and Mechanisation using MERL’s object and archive collections.

In addition, CETL-AURS funded two summer student placements for projects in the library, developing bibliographical resources to assist researchers, and in the garden for devising interpretive labelling. We also offered a placement for a Nottingham Trent student undertaking an MA in Heritage Studies who undertook research work into our volunteer programme.

2007/8 has seen ongoing development in the volunteer programme. Student and community volunteers are contributing to a variety of projects ranging from collections work to learning events, tour guiding, and improving the garden. Specialised training is offered to volunteers in tour guiding, use of the museum database, basic book and object conservation and family learning. Undergraduate Learning Offi cer Rhi Smith was awarded a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Careers Management Skills Fellowship to develop accreditation for student volunteers who are working with the university collections.

Audience fi guresThe Museum received 19,640 visitors in the year compared to 14,543 in the equivalent period the previous year, an increase of 35%. A total of 918 children participated in schools’ visits.

Over the year, 344 new researchers were registered to use the MERL collections, which generated 832 individual visits, an increase of almost 20% compared with 2006/07. The majority of users (75%) comprise non-University of Reading researchers, although as a result of the teaching modules being conducted by the Undergraduate Learning Offi cer, the number of undergraduates using the service has risen from 12% to 26% in the last year.

The enquiry service continues to fi eld thousands of questions worldwide on everything from obscure items of farm machinery to orchards, rural fashion and the criteria for judging sheep. We can’t answer them all but are able to help many.

A family exploring the garden on the garden trail. Image by Filip Gierlinski.


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Staff activitiesKate Arnold-Forster was invited to join a cultural leadership programme, funded by the Arts Council, for Women Leaders in museums; to be the South East museums representative on the Renaissance Board for the South East and for the last year has served as a Board member of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council South East. She has also continued to serve as a member of University Museums Group committee; the International Council for Museums Committee (ICOM) for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) and organising committee for ICOM UMAC Conference 2008; the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Designation Panel; the Museums Association professional review panel; the Thames Valley Museums Group committee; the Royal College of Surgeons Museums Advisory Committee; the Academic Advisory Board for museums of Domestic Design and Architecture, Middlesex University.

Dr Roy Brigden served as President of the Society of Folklife Studies and co-organiser of its 2008 conference in Killarney; Praesidium member of the International Association of Agricultural Museums, attending meetings in Romania and the XVth Congress in Serbia; committee member of the Rural Museums Network, and joint organiser/host of its two day Turning Green conference; and board member of the Milton Keynes Museum.

Dr Jonathan Brown is editor of Berkshire Old and New.

Alison Hilton joined the Arts Marketing Association’s mentoring scheme as a mentee, and was also accepted to take part in the Association’s ‘Action Learning’ scheme for audience development.

Peter McShane is a co-opted member of the executive committee of the Berkshire Local History Association.

Bekky Moran received EU funding to attend a Family Learning training course and join the European Family Learning Network in Karjaa, Finland.

Rhianedd Smith completed her PGCAP and ran a workshop for the V&A and RIBA on student learning in museums.

Fred van de Geer is a member of the South East Collections Emergency Response Unit and an assessor for the Professional Accreditation of Conservator-Restorers Scheme operated by the Institute of Conservation.

PublicationsBrigden, R., ‘Connecting with Rural Crafts: A Project at the Museum of English Rural Life’ Proceedings of the 2007 Conference of The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums, vol XXX, 2008, pp 125–8

Brigden, R., ‘Rural Crafts Today: a fi lm project at the Museum of English Rural Life’, UMAC Newsletter (ICOM’s International Committee for University Museums and Collections), June 2008, pp 21–22.

Brigden, R., ‘Ploughs, Chaff Cutters & Steam engines. Lincolnshire’s agricultural implement makers’, edited by Ken Redmore and published by the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 2007 (Review for Folk Life, Vol 46, 2007–8, pp 175–6)

Brigden, R., ‘The Life and Times of a Hampshire Blacksmith’, by Philip Sheail, published by Molewood Hawthorn Publishing, 2007 (Review for The Agricultural History Review, vol 56, Part 1, 2008, pp107–8).

Brown, J.H, The Rural World of Eric Guy (2008), Old Pond Publishing, 128pp.

Brown, J.H, Steam on the Farm (2008), Crowood Press, 190pp.

McShane, P. ‘Annual List of publications on agrarian history, 2006’, The Agricultural History Review, vol 56, 2008, pp 79–93.



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Papers presentedRoy Brigden‘MERL and Rural Englishness’ to a joint workshop on Englishness with the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, December 2007.

‘Rural Museums in an Urban and Multicultural Society’, to the 9th SIEF Congress (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore), University of Ulster, June 2008.

‘Recording Change’, Presidential address to the Society of Folklife Studies annual conference, Killarney, September 2008.

‘Agricultural Museums in a Changing World’, to the 15th Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Museums, Novi Sad, Serbia, September 2008.

Bekky Moran‘Family Learning in University Museums– a case study’ to the University Museums and the Community conference in Manchester in September.

Rhianedd Smith‘The real thing: museum learning theory and undergraduates’ – at ‘Unspoken Interactions’ a CLiP CETL conference at the University of the Arts London.

‘Journeys of exploration: supporting student research with collections’ to the Learning through Enquiry Alliance conference Sheffi eld University (also at Reading University’s Teaching and Learning Conference).


Annual report 2007–2008

For more information, please contact:

Museum of English Rural LifeUniversity of ReadingRedlands RoadReading, RG1 5EX

[email protected] (0118) 378 8660

www.reading.ac.uk/merl


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