Archives

The Museum of English Rural Life is a major national repository for archives of agriculture and rural life. The strengths of the collection include: records of major agricultural manufacturing firms: historic archives of agricultural organisations and cooperatives: a large collections of personal records and journals of farm workers, and company accounts of farms across England and films relating to the countryside and agriculture.

 

Searching the MERL archives

You can explore the MERL collections using the our online database

Many of our archive catalogues have been digitised and are available to view in full from the Access to Archives website.

Information about Victorian farming is available on the New Technologies website website.  New Technologies shows the new implements and machines introduced into farming during this period. It concentrates on the Victorian period, but also includes some developments in the eighteenth century.  You can trace the course of change through the advertising of the manufacturers and follow developments through the timeline or by searching the list of manufacturers. 

If you are interested in finding out about the history of steam engines visit our Heavy Metal Project pages Heavy Metal Project - Museum of English Rural Life (MERL)

 

We have recently acquired the archives of the Research Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies (ResCEW) which is based at the University of Reading. The collection is in the initial stages of being catalogued so access is limited by a database containing basic information concerning evacuees and their evacuation is available here: ResCEW database 

Access and study

Our archive collections may be consulted for free in our Reading Room.