Collections
The collections contain objects, books, archives, photographs, film and sound recordings relating to the history of food, farming and the countryside.
The Museum is Accredited by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the collections are Designated as being of national importance.
Highlights of the Collections
Farmer and Stockbreeder photographic collection
The Farmer and Stockbreeder photographic collection contains over 100 000 images dating from the late 1920s to1965. They illustrate the transformation of the English countryside from the era of horse power to tractors, and from manual labour to machinery. A wide range of subjects are covered and they document arable and livestock farming, prevailing husbandry practices, the introduction of new technologies and the application of science to agriculture.
The agricultural journal Farmer and Stockbreeder began as a weekly publication in 1889. Farmer and Stockbreeder went on to become the leading agricultural periodical. In 1971 the magazine merged with British Farmer to become British Farmer and Stockbreeder, until loss of advertising revenue forced its closure in 1984.
The Digitisation of Countryside Images project has recently digitised 6 500 images which will be available on the Museum’s database from the autumn 2009. An online exhibition with a selection of almost 300 images is now available. Portable steam engine
The CPRE archive
The Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) was established in 1926. The Council saw itself as the guardian of the countryside, campaigning against threats to it. The CPRE had constituent and affiliated bodies, as well as county and local branches throughout England.
In 1969 the name of the Council was changed to The Council for the Protection of Rural England to reflect a change in approach to its activities.
The name of the Council was again changed to The Campaign to Protect Rural England, aiming to promote the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England by encouraging the sustainable use of land and other natural resources in town and county. The collection contains minute books, annual reports, publications, maps, exhibition material, press cuttings and photographs. However, the majority of the collection is correspondence files. The collection contains material dating from 1857 to 1999.
Portable steam engine
This portable steam engine was built by Clayton & Shuttleworth of Lincoln in 1877. Typically, it would have been used on the farm to drive a threshing machine. It was last owned by a farmer near Banbury in Oxfordshire and was one of the first objects to be collected when the Museum was founded in 1951.
With a capacity of over six gallons, this giant teapot was intended to serve at large social and community events, such as a tennis party. It was made in 1936 and was the work of Michael Cardew (1901-1983), one of the most distinguished English potters of the twentieth century. The tea pot was acquired by the British Council in the 1930s to form part of a large collection of rural craft material that toured the world in exhibitions both before and after the Second World War. In 1960 the whole collection, amounting to over four hundred items, was transferred to the Museum.
Herefordshire Pomona
Herefordshire Pomona: containing original figures and descriptions of the most esteemed kinds of apples and pears / the illustrations drawn from nature by Miss Ellis and Miss Bull ; technical editor, Robert Hogg ; general editor, Henry Graves Bull. 2 v. Hereford: Jakeman & Carver, 1876-1885
A committee was established by the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club of Hereford to note all the varieties of apples and pears being grown in Herefordshire orchards at the time. The illustrated guide was originally issued in 7 parts and then bound together to form the Pomona. It was illustrated by Miss Alice Blanche Ellis who was a gold medallist at the Bloomsbury School of Art and Edith Elizabeth Bull who was the daughter of the editor and past President of the Club.
It is rare and sought-after as there were only 600 copies printed and it is described by experts as "one of the finest fruit books ever issued".
British farmer's cyclopaedia
British farmer's cyclopaedia: a new and complete agricultural dictionary of improved modern husbandry / Thomas Potts. 2nd ed. London : B. Crosby & Co., 1809
This agricultural encyclopaedia, first published in 1806, is characteristic of the Library's holdings of books and journals on practical farming, ranging from eighteenth century treatises on husbandry through nineteenth century encyclopaedias on farming practice to the successive editions of twentieth century textbooks.Printed material includes sets of Arthur Young's farming tours and William Marshall's county and regional surveys, both of the late eighteenth century, and of the "General Views", the county agricultural surveys of the Board of Agriculture, published 1793-1817.