Library
Introduction
The library at the Museum of English Rural Life is recognised as one of the most important collections in the country for the study of the history of British agriculture, the countryside and rural society.
Its role is to gather and make accessible resources which provide a record of rural life and agricultural history, in accordance with the mission statement of the museum.
The very wide-ranging collections embrace farming through the ages, the development of agricultural technology, the history of food and diet, perceptions of the countryside, the social history of the countryside, garden and landscape history, the politics of land use, conservation issues, local history, estate management, and rural crafts and industries. There are uniquely accessible, extensive runs of historically significant farming and countryside journals from the nineteenth century onwards.
The library also holds a number of rare agricultural books which were the focus of an exhibition at the Special Collections Service.
For information about recent additions to the MERL library, please visit our new acquisitions page.
You can explore the MERL library collections using the University Library's Unicorn catalogue.
Uniquely for a major research library, we are open without appointment to all users Monday 10.00-17.00, Tuesday-Friday 09.00-17.00, and virtually the entire library is on open access. The collections may be consulted for free in our reading room.
Specialist subject collections
These collections are held on closed access but items are available by request.
- Herd Book Collection
- Milling and Baking Collection
- Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) Collection
- Dairy Collection
- Robert Dawson Romany Collection
- The Tools & Trades History Society Library