Museum of English Rural Life (MERL)

Since 1951, The Museum of English Rural Life has collected objects, archives, books, journals, photographs and films that tell the story of food and farming in England. Its collection – which includes over 4 kilometres of archives, 1 million photographs and 80,000 books – has been officially Designated as outstanding by Arts Council England. Open to all free of charge, the museum regularly holds seminars, conferences, and workshops. It is owned and managed by the University of Reading.

The collections are a major source of knowledge and inspiration about how people lived and worked in the countryside. The archives (part of an Accredited Archive Service) range from papers of individual farms and large estates, to the institutional archives of major countryside organisations and trade records of agricultural firms. Over a million rural photographs are held, alongside films relating to the countryside, tens of thousands of engineering drawings, personal records and journals of farmers, farm workers, land girls and evacuees.  Particular highlights include the archives of the Landscape Institute and of several high-profile landscape architects; the archive of Sutton’s Seeds; and the records of countryside charities such as CPRE, Royal Agricultural Society of England, the Open Spaces Society, the Royal Forestry Society and the Council/Campaign for National Parks.

The library is the most important in the country for the study of the history of British agriculture, the countryside and rural society. The majority of the 80,000 volumes in the library are open access. There are uniquely accessible, extensive runs of historically significant journals from the nineteenth century onwards, a large number of rare books and specialist collections.

In addition, the University Herbarium provides excellent research and teaching resources on the biological sciences that inform our understanding of food and farming, and we work closely with academics and students across many disciplines.

Everyone is welcome to visit the galleries, use the reading room to access the archives and library, and make use of our digital access resources. For enquiries, please email merl@reading.ac.uk