University Museums and Special Collections Service

Review 2010–2011 Museum of English Rural Life and Special Collections

The Museum of English Rural Life was established at the University of Reading in 1951, at a pivotal time in the history of the modern British countryside. It was born into a climate of change, with country life evolving at a rapid pace, horsepower giving way to tractors and threshing machines to combine harvesters. The Museum emerged from the Department of Agriculture when John Walter Yeoman Higgs (1923–1986), a specialist in agricultural technology, recognised the need to preserve England’s rural heritage by collecting the last vestiges of a material world seen to be under threat. The historian Sir Frank M. Stenton (1880–1967), Vice-Chancellor of the University at the time of the Museum’s founding, approved of the idea and envisaged a research centre focussed on serious study.

A barn was made available to store acquisitions until a more permanent home was found on the University’s recently purchased Whiteknights campus. The catalogue grew rapidly, with teaching aids from the Department of Agriculture and piecemeal donations soon being supplemented by more sizeable acquisitions. These included artefacts gathered during the 1930s and 1940s by Lavinia Dugan Smith (1870–1944), which were largely provided by friends and neighbours near her East Hendred home and used by her to educate local children. Another notable early

gift comprised rural equipment amassed by Harold John Massingham (1888–1952), the son of a prominent journalist and a significant rural writer in his own right.

Despite modest beginnings the response was huge and by late 1954 the Museum already held over 3,500 objects. Its first public displays opened in 1955, by which time the collections had doubled in size to 7,000 items. Over the years the collections grew rapidly as the Museum became synonymous with rural history and heritage crafts.

The Museum sought for many years to locate to more fitting premises and a vacancy at St Andrew’s Hall provided a perfect opportunity. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the site was refurbished and extended. The old Museum closed its doors in 2004 and the redeveloped building opened in 2005, heralding a fresh wave of public-centred events, educational activities, improved research services, and broad-ranging exhibitions. Updated galleries seek to showcase the richness of the Museum’s holdings and renovated gardens provide vibrant and verdant outdoor space. Expansive rural holdings now include some 30,000 objects, 75,000 books, 1,750 linear metres of archives, and over 1 million photographic items, which are together Designated as being of national significance. This year marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Museum.

History of the Museum of English Rural Life: 1951–2011

We are delighted to be able to mark five years at our new home at St Andrew’s Hall for the Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading Special Collections, by the launch of our first joint annual review.

Museums and special collections offer an extraordinary resource to support the intellectual and cultural life of the University and the wider community. Increasing numbers, members of the public, researchers and especially undergraduate and post graduate students, have once again benefitted from our services and from a hugely varied programme of high quality exhibitions, academic and public events and activity. We hope this review will help to highlight some of the outstanding achievements of the last year, including the contribution made by staff and volunteers.

Introduction

Cover image: fragment of Thomas Buckminster’s ‘An almanack and prognostication’ (London: by Richarde Watkins and Iames Robertes, 1590)

Left: enamel sign of ‘The Newsboy’ designed by Septimus E. Scott, 1905, from the WH Smith archive

Activity programmes, as well as services for students and researchers are increasingly significant in meeting these objectives, where partnership working has frequently played a key role in delivering projects and reaching new audiences.

During the 60th anniversary year of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) we have been delighted to be celebrating through an exhibition and programme organised jointly with the BBC’s radio serial, The Archers, the world’s longest running broadcast radio drama. In May 2011 MERL hosted the Symposium: ‘Media and the countryside’ to coincide with the opening of our joint exhibition ‘Everyday Stories of Country Folk’

Communicating and sharing our knowledge

– celebrating 60 years of The Archers and MERL, 1951–2011. ‘Talking Heads’ interviews with the main participants are now hosted on the BBC website as a lasting legacy.

We have had an exceptionally successful year for attracting funding to support projects that will enhance access to our collections. An exciting new venture, for example, is A Sense of Place, a project funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund that will enable us to explore new ways of communicating our knowledge about our collections, using a digital platform and working in partnership with academic specialists from the University and community organisations.

We aim to ensure we share our knowledge and expertise as a nationally and internationally recognised resource.

2010–11 MERL seminar programmeOur programme of MERL seminars attracted enthusiastic audiences.

•‘A Wasteful use of National Resources’ – farm subsidy in the Uplands 1947–1970 – Dr Hilary Crowe, University of Cambridge and MERL Research Fellow

•The Making of Ballet 2009 – Susanne Clausen, artist and Reader in Fine Art at the University of Reading

•Landscapes and Ecology – towards a sustainable future – Dr Geoffrey Griffiths, University of Reading

•Shooting Parties, Gamekeepers and Poachers – Caroline Carr-Whitworth, Curator, Art, English Heritage (Brodsworth Hall)

•A grateful nation? British Agriculture and postwar construction – Dr Clare Griffiths, University of Sheffield

•Conservation and analysis of the UK’s oldest windmills – Luke Bonwick, Bonwick Milling Heritage Consultancy

•Transatlantic traffic in rural imaginations – Garrett Dash Nelson, University of Nottingham

•Business and Pleasure: women, work and

the professionalism of farming as a female career

in England 1900–1950 – Dr Nicola Verdon,

Sheffield Hallam University

•Rethinking Pitt-Rivers: analysing the activities of a

nineteenth century collector – Alison Petch and Jeremy

Coote, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

•Doing good work: the Women’s Institute and

village history in the interwar period –

Bridget Yates, University of Gloucestershire

•Nucleus of a folklore museum: folklore, material

culture, and a museum that never existed –

Dr Ollie Douglas, University of Reading

2010–11 MERL adult day schoolsPopular day schools were offered on themes of

community interest.

•‘Were you an Evacuee, Granny?’ How to research

your family’s war child history.

•Researching the history of Reading

David and Ruth Archer (Timothy Bentinck and Felicity Finch) Image copyright/credit BBC Photographer Gary Moyes

MERL Annual LectureThe MERL Annual Lecture was delivered by Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government, who discussed the potential threats and challenges to achieving a sustainable global food supply. The lecture also marked the launch of the new Centre for Food Security at the University and was hosted by the Business School on the Whiteknights campus.

Staff activityStaff have contributed their expert knowledge within the museums, archives and heritage community; Director, Kate Arnold-Forster, has served on the Museums, Libraries and Archives Designation Panel and the MLA Review of Accreditation, among other external advisory committees, and has continued her role on the advisory board of the Langley Academy, Slough, on behalf of the University, the first school in the country with a museum learning specialism. Isabel Hughes, Curator of Collections & Engagement has served as a member of the register of expert advisers for the Heritage Lottery Fund and as a trustee of Jane Austen’s House Museum. Professional Accreditation Conservator Fred Van de Geer served as a Professional Accreditation Assessor for the Institute of Conservation and Guy Baxter, University Archivist has been a member of the steering group for the University of East London’s CEDAR project on embedding theatre collections into teaching and learning. Our Volunteer Co-ordinator, Rob Davies has advised museums and other initiatives across the University of Reading in relation to best practice in volunteering. He has also provided expertise within the wider museums community.

Left: John Higgs, first Keeper of the Museum

Exhibitions‘Looking at landscapes: colours and contours’ May – September 2010

‘Farming for the New Britain: images of farmers in war and peace’ September – December 2010

‘A circle and a century’, with Reading Civic Society August – October 2010

‘Land ladies: women and farming in England, 1900–1945’ January – April 2011

‘The future of things past’ Art installation mounted by Art Department students from the University of Reading March 2011

‘Everyday Stories of Country Folk’ 60th anniversary exhibition, May – December 2011

The Archers preview exhibition in the main library

A History of the World exhibit at MERL (British Museum/ BBC project)

Small exhibitions on display in the staircase hall outside the Special Collections Service reading room and in the University Library entrance hall have showcased material from the University Special Collections of archives and rare books. These have included displays of rare editions of important early modern texts and treasures from the Macmillan, Longman and Leo Cooper publishing archives.

The Archers board game

The Museum’s first home in the building now known as Old Whiteknights House

A varied and stimulating programme of events over the last year has attracted record numbers and has included a significant increase in opportunities for audiences to experience and learn about our collections through outreach events and activities. In September 2011 MERL was represented at the Royal Berkshire Show as part of the University of Reading’s award winning stand. We gave visitors an opportunity to sample our joint MERL/The Archers 60th anniversary exhibition, ‘Everyday Stories of Country Folk’, with a chance to try out sound effects used in the radio programme and grind corn from University farms using quernstones from the Museum. Over 1,000 visitors engaged in our activities over two days. The Museum

also took part in a variety of community events including lambing day at Rushall Farm, the Farmers’ Market in Reading and a Universities Week event at the Oracle Shopping Centre in Reading town centre.

Our profile within the community continues to rise. Staff appeared on BBC South Today and Berkshire Radio, promoting new exhibitions and events, contributed to a Bucklebury Village History Day and helped identify artefacts for a village-based community museum. We have welcomed groups as varied as the Emmer Green Parish Women’s Guild, the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and a group of environmental protection professionals and specialists from Sichuan Province, China. We have

Public engagement and outreachWe aim to deliver and support distinctive public events and programmes for all our audiences within and beyond the University.

Left: Apple Day at MERL

(Thames Valley) to offer Science Busking in Reading town centre, delivering kitchen science activities and a fish mummification session.

The MERL gardens proved a popular venue for Apple Day in the autumn, and, in the summer, Poetry in the Garden and our Village Fête. Community groups who participated in the Fête include local Young Farmers and horticultural societies, Newbury & District Agricultural Society, Friends of the Royal Berkshire Hospital and a host of local craftspeople. Over 1,000 visitors enjoyed traditional food and drink, stalls and Morris Dancing. Inside the Museum we held a ‘Museums at Night’ 50s Music event and a

been featured twice in the popular BBC magazine ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ in a visual feature on ‘Women in farming’, and under an ‘Expert’s choice’ feature on useful websites.

We continue to forge strong partnerships to deliver our engagement and outreach activities. We joined with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) to offer heritage and conservation skills workshops for special needs schools. Pupils were taught skills to enable them to take the ideas and turn them into Enterprise Schemes back in school. For National Science Week, MERL and the Ure Museum joined forces with the British Association for Science

Clockwise from left: horse brass with Festival of Britain image. Morris Dancing in the MERL garden. Volunteers working on the Longman archive. Universities Week reception at MERL celebrating the contribution of volunteers. MERL Village Fête, 4 June 2011.

Traditional Craft Fair. In June 2011, MERL hosted the University’s Celebrating Community Engagement reception. The Vice-Chancellor acknowledged the contribution of volunteers across the University, including MERL’s two longest serving volunteers, who between them have given over 30 years’ service.

Volunteering at UMASCS has continued to thrive. This year we started the process of applying for Investing in Volunteers, the standards scheme administered by Volunteer England. Areas assessed include the recruitment and induction of volunteers, staff ability to work with and manage volunteers, and volunteer opportunities within the organisation, including diversity of roles and training. Our regional project Volunteers for Museums concluded in March 2011, leaving a legacy of strong partnerships between museums, volunteers and the voluntary sector across the south east, under MERL’s leadership.

Visitor numbers

In 2010/11 we received 29,470 visitors, including 1,308 school children.

Right: Half-term visitors to MERL

The last year has been marked by some outstanding new additions to the collections. Highlights include the acquisition of the WH Smith archive that incorporates business records relating to the book selling business and the Hambledon family and estate papers, whose former home was Greenlands, now part of the University’s Henley Business School.

MERL continues to explore new approaches to modernising the scope of its collections through the HLF- funded project, Collecting 20th Century Rural Cultures. We have been keen to encourage the

participation of our users in this process: visitors to our 60th anniversary exhibition, for example, have been invited to view a selection of objects acquired through this project and are encouraged to contribute suggestions about new types of material we should add to the collections. Other important additions to Special Collections include a run of Ladybird books to complement our extensive collection of Ladybird artwork, and a very rare fragment of an almanack and prognostication by Thomas Buckminster (London, 1590).

CollectionsThe development of the University’s nationally and internationally important collections remains a key priority in helping support their contribution to research and teaching and learning through both acquisition and an active programme of enhancing our collections management.

Farmyard toys produced by the company Britains Ltd

1950s Farmers Weekly photograph of horse-drawn harrowing

Ensuring we continue to enhance our services and access to collections for research and teaching purposes is underpinned by improvements to the management of our collections. The past year has been marked by completion of a major initiative to relocate archive and library collections to the new store at Worton Grange as part of the University project to reorganise library materials following the closure of the Bulmershe campus and the development of new facilities at Whiteknights and London Road. This has involved the transfer and reordering of the equivalent of over 2.5km of shelved material. By bringing together these collections in a single site we can now provide access for researchers to previously inaccessible collections as part of our reading room service.

A further major development has been the launch of the new ADLIB system for the museum and archive collections. This has transformed the way our users can access and search our catalogues. It has brought together 276,918 archive and object descriptions while more than 38,347 library descriptions are now available on the University Library’s Unicorn catalogue. Searching has been further enhanced by the introduction of Enterprise, the University’s collections discovery service; software that enables users to access museum, archive and library material across all our databases. A number of internal procedures for collections management have also been reviewed and improved to enhance our management and auditing of accessions and loans.

We continue to make strides in cataloguing. A major project to catalogue, reorganise and rehouse the Longman and Macmillan publishing archives was completed this year. Tackling this scale of project was made possible by the support of 20 volunteers, who

Clockwise from left: bottles of drench, a medication used by vets to alleviate livestock illness. Turn of the century livestock cart acquired with HLF Collecting Cultures funds. 1940s image from Farmers Weekly of a shepherd and his dogs. A planimeter used by leather workers to measure the area of hides.

contributed more than 1,500 hours to help sort the contents of over 600 archive boxes, each containing more than 40 contract agreements, and making this important collection accessible for the first time to researchers.

Regular volunteer help has enabled us to make considerable progress on the mezzanine store cleaning and re-organising project, under the direction of our conservator, Fred van de Geer. A project to document, conserve and restore a large collection of printing blocks relating to the products of Marshalls of Gainsborough is also close to completion thanks to the work of volunteers.

Preventive conservation is essential to the long term preservation of our collections. It includes

environmental monitoring, integrated pest management and house-keeping of archival stores. This year an extensive survey was carried out on a part of the archive by Sue Hourigan, specialist paper conservator.

We continue to seek project funding to enable us to digitise more of our collections and enable researchers to access a broader range of information about them. Work has started during September 2011 on the Rural Images Discovered project which is funded by the Foyle Foundation. The two year project will digitise and catalogue 15,000 images from the Farmers Weekly and Farmer and Stockbreeder press collections and the Peter Adams and John Tarlton collections.  

Ladybird books acquired by Special Collections

The MERL Fellowship scheme attracts increasing interest among scholars from around the world. The 2009/10 Fellowship, awarded to Dr John Martin of de Montfort University, led to his study on the 1975–6 Drought in England and Wales, to be presented to the Irish Environmental Network, Dublin University in November 2011.

A paper on ‘The Agrarian Crisis of the mid-1970s: the British Experience’, as a contribution to the 25th Anniversary Summer Conference, at the Centre for Contemporary British History, Kings College, London, was presented in July 2011.

Thanks to a generous endowment, in the name of Gwyn E Jones, a former member of the University’s Department of Rural Extension, we have been able to welcome two fellows in this coming year. Professor Keith Grieves, of Kingston University, will undertake a research project entitled ‘Open

spaces after the Great War: reafforestation, remembrance and recreation’. Our first overseas Fellow, Dr Joseph Hodge, is Associate Professor of History at West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia. His work in colonial history will examine how scientists and technical experts in tropical agriculture moved into careers in international research and overseas development, with particular reference to the important part played by leading academics from the University of Reading.

Staff publications over the year include Dr Oliver Douglas’ paper ‘Folklore, Survivals, and the Neo-archaic: The Materialist Character of Late Nineteenth-century Homeland Ethnography’ for the Museum History Journal. Participation in conferences included representing MERL at the international ‘Rural History 2010’ conference in East Sussex, and contributing to the ‘Museums, Researchers & Engagement’ conference hosted by UCL. Part of the Beacons of Public Engagement programme, this was jointly organised with the University Museums Group.

ResearchPromoting and facilitating research activity related to our collections provides the opportunity to offer a range of innovative activity.

Souvenir mug featuring artwork by the well-known illustrator Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe

With help from volunteers MERL was able to undertake a comprehensive and detailed survey of its plough collection in order to provide a full response to the Rural Museum Network’s Effective Collections project Digging Deep (March 2011).

Work commenced on a detailed academic assessment of the Barnett collection of sewing machines by Professor Andrew Godley, with the kind assistance of specialists from the International Sewing Machine Society (June 2011). With funding from the Barnett bequest we have also been able to install a workstation in the MERL object stores, to be known as the Barnett Resource Area providing space and facilities for researchers to access these collections in situ.

Jane McCutchan, a PhD student affiliated to MERL and to the Department of Economics, has continued her research on the mechanisation of agriculture and the British agricultural steam engine industry, 1840–1920, during which time she has delivered papers to various special interest groups and societies.

Right: researchers viewing the Festival of Britain banners at MERL

Research numbers

Staff have responded to over 1,300 research enquiries relating to MERL and more than 1,300 on other special collections. Our reading room attracted research 1,606 research visits during 2010/11, with 561 new visitors registered. Our website also proved an important resource with 1 million hits, and 80,000 unique visitors.

Feedback from students using our buildings and collections emphasises the value of the learning environment that the Museum provides, the benefits of being able to see behind the scenes and learning about different roles within a museum and the value of being able to apply what they have learned to real situations – for example a museum module hosted by MERL includes a research project that exploits the Museum accession files and supporting archive material.

In line with our aims of reviewing collections knowledge and appropriate expertise amongst staff to promote collections based academic programmes, MERL and UMASCS have been working with both the School of Humanities and the School of Human &

Engaging our students

Environmental Science to build on the successful museum modules first initiated under the CETL-AURS (Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning focusing on Applied Undergraduate Research Skills), 2005–2010. We are in the process of developing new undergraduate degrees in Museums Studies and Archaeology and Museums Studies and Classics for 2013.

In addition to students undertaking the museum modules, UMASCS and MERL continue to support students in their learning across other disciplines. This has encompassed delivering a research skills seminar for Department of Agriculture Part 1 students and providing two Education Elsewhere placements for PGCE students from the Institute of Education’s Initial Teaching Training programme to work

We have continued to support teaching with collections and have been involved in exciting new developments to help shape future programmes that we hope will build on our success in undergraduate teaching.

Top right: students attending a museum modules seminar at MERL

on analysis of digital activities for schools using the mobile phone app OOKL.

In March 2011, the MERL building, including the Museum galleries, reading room and gardens provided the venue for an exhibition by students from the Department of Art. ‘The Future of Things Past’ was a series of installations created by undergraduates responding to MERL’s collections and buildings.

Numbers of requests for placement and work experience continue to expand. In 2010/11, 2 students came to work at MERL and UMASCS as part of the RED award scheme, with a further 19 coming as part of our regular volunteering programme. We have also offered placements to two students from Exeter College, University of Oxford, providing opportunities

to work with our archivists on the Oxford Nutrition Society records of Hugh Sinclair, including the Eskimo experiment. A student from the BSc Information and Library Studies course at University of Aberystwyth completed a 3 week placement, also working alongside our archivists and librarian. This year we were pleased to be able to offer an international internship, through the Erasmus scheme, to a student from the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy.

Student numbers

In 2010/11 MERL and the Special Collections Service received 1,996 visits from undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Reading, including 213 first time visitors to the reading room.

The Reading Room at MERL

Museum of English Rural Life and Special Collections Review 2010–2011

For more information, please contact:

Museum of English Rural LifeUniversity of Reading Redlands Road Reading RG1 5EX

merl@reading.ac.uk Tel (0118) 378 8660

www.reading.ac.uk/merl