Archives featured in the Galleries

Written by Caroline Gould, Deputy University Archivist

Sheep Dipping

Sheep Dipping

The new galleries were opened on 19 October 2016, after a £3million redevelopment programme with £1.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).  Prior to the redevelopment, the galleries contained a large number of objects with little interpretation. We were keen to include archives, archival film and photographs through the new displays aiming to revitalise the way visitors engage with the Museum’s extraordinary collections.

In February 2014, we started researching the archives and photographs to identify items for possible inclusion in the galleries. Our strategy on how to include archives in the galleries developed over time.  However, we found five main ways to feature archives.

We have included photographs in the galleries to aid interpretation of the objects and themes. In Gallery 2, ‘A Year on the Farm’, the largest photograph measures 2280m x 2500m, it shows sheep dipping in progress (John Tarlton Collection).  Our sheep dip object is placed in front of the photograph.

We have used archives in cases on a limited basis. The cases are likely to remain quite fixed. This is a challenge if we wish to permanently preserve the archives. The cases are not environmentally controlled and prolonged opening of volumes for display will, in time, damage the item. We therefore will need to

Blacksmith account book of Wiltshire 1934-1939

Blacksmith account book of Wiltshire 1934-1939

monitor the archives selected carefully. However, having said all this the items we have selected look great. I am particularly pleased with the blacksmith account book of Wiltshire 1934-1939 in the wagon walk.

In three galleries we have created 18 drawers under cases which feature archives and books. The items will change every 4-6 months. This provides an opportunity to display more of the collections which have previously only been consulted in the Reading Room. Visitors will be able to browse these collections and hopefully see new items when they next visit. Currently in Gallery 3, ‘Town and Country’, we have a drawer in the ‘Grow your Own’ section. This displays a minute book and report from ‘The Women’s Farm and Garden Association’ which details the setting up

Minute book and report from ‘The Women’s Farm and Garden Association’

Minute book and report from ‘The Women’s Farm and Garden Association’

the Women’s National Land Service Corps, which later became the Women’s Land Army, dated 23 May 1916.

There are some wonderful gaming interactives in the new galleries; lambing time appears to be the favourite at the moment.  Two interactives feature over 790 photographs from The MERL collections. ‘Then and Now’ is located in Gallery 3 it allows visitors to explore our photographs for the local area. We have included current photographs for Caversham, Wokingham and Hambledon. Gallery 4 features the ‘Voices and Views’ interactive, for each county we have included 10 photographs and some sound clips. Another interactive in Gallery 3, features the evacuee archive; it allows visitors to explore the stories of eleven individuals: nine evacuees, one teacher and one host son. Included in the display are contemporary photographs, letters and diaries.

The MERL holds over 1500 archival films, including films of the Ministry of Agriculture Film Library, National Dairy Council and Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies promotional films.  In Gallery 6 ‘Forces for Change’ we have a screen to show ten archival films, edited to seven minutes each. The current selection includes two compilations from Screen Archive South East and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. The Britain on Film Rural Life programme has funded four events in West Sussex, Hampshire, Kent and Berkshire. The project is funded by The British Film institute. The compilation films at The MERL will be screened until the end of the year.

We created six photo albums featuring twenty photographs or documents. Gallery 2 ‘A year on the Far

‘Making Rural England’ photograph album featuring crafts and the home.

‘Making Rural England’ photograph album featuring crafts and the home.

m’ shows farming through the seasons, while three photo albums in Gallery 3 ‘Town and Country’ complement the featured objects: the horse, the steam engine and the Land Rover. Additionally in Gallery 5 ‘Making Rural England’, two photo albums feature crafts and the home.

We have worked on selection of these items for over two years. It is now wonderful to visit the galleries and see visitors enjoying the displays.  A special thanks to Caroline Benson, Photographic Assistant without whom the above would have been impossible.

Shaping the Land – why is the first of our new galleries all about trees?

Written by Guy Baxter, Archivist

The introductory text

The introductory text

The first space that visitors to the new MERL galleries enter is deceptively simple. It contains one object (a timber carriage), one large picture (an oak tree) and one literary quotation. Thanks to the projected animation and immersive soundscape, visitors can also see and hear the seasons change in the woods.

The gallery was conceived to give visitors the idea of being out in the countryside – after all, the Museum is in the middle of a large town. This is where we hint at the idea of there having been a “natural” environment, before people came along and started “shaping the land”. The theme of woodland reminds us that a greater proportion of England would have been wooded in pre-historic times, and so our ancestors would have faced the massive task of clearing trees in order to grow crops and graze animals.

But the gallery also carries a number of smaller and more subtle messages. Let’s start with the oak tree. Not only is this a powerful symbol of England – it appears on the “English” version of the pound coin after all – but the image chosen is the first photograph ever taken of an oak, by William Henry Fox

The Fox Talbot tree and the timber carriage

The Fox Talbot tree and the timber carriage

Talbot. Of course, his connection to Reading is well known given that he produced The Pencil of Nature, the world’s first photographic book, in the town. His oak tree is shown in the winter, standing strong against the ravages of time. Longevity is another trait of oak trees that suits the context of the gallery: the “timeframe” here is one of centuries not years.

The second idea that we introduce is seasonality. This is done through our animation which effectively shows all four seasons in one day – not such a rare occurrence in England! The animation, made by the Netherlands-based firm ShoSho, shows a woodland and also some land beyond that has been cleared – but with a lone oak in the background as well. In this gallery we introduce the changing seasons in nature partly as a prelude to the next section, A Year on the Farm, which examines how the seasons relate to the food that we grow and eat.

The animals that occasionally appear in the animation include a gall wasp. This was partly inspired by Dr George McGavin’s amazing documentary on oak trees in which he notes not only the symbiosis between the gall wasp and the tree but also the subsequent use of oak gall in the production of ink. So much of what is in our library and archive – indeed so much of our recorded history and knowledge – owes a debt to that relationship between insect and tree.

In front of the animation stands the timber carriage – a large and constant reminder of man’s interaction with the land. The carriage itself, also known as a ‘timber jill’, was used for hauling timber by

Photograph of a timber carriage in use

Photograph of a timber carriage in use

the Hunt Brothers of Waterside Works, a firm of millwrights in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The donor, Mr Tom Hunt, requested that they be recorded as ‘in memory of Thomas B. Hunt, Millwright, of Waterside Works, Soham, Cambs.’ This was his father, who died in 1954 at the age of 95 and was working almost up to the last. It was given to the MERL in 1955 – the year that we opened to the public for the first time – so it’s appropriate that it should be “object number 1 in gallery number 1” as we re-open.

We have also displayed a photograph, from the Miss Wight Collection, to show a similar carriage in use. The photograph was taken around 1935 in Aconbury Woods, Herefordshire.

The quotation, chosen by Dr Paddy Bullard in the Department of English and American Literature, is from the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. It comes from his poem Pied Beauty. We also considered another of Hopkins’s poems, Binsey Poplars in which he mourns the felling of trees in 1879;

The quotation and the images of leaves

The quotation and the images of leaves

and we looked at using a section from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Houseman (verse 31) which describes the same wind blowing through the trees that blew on the Romans many centuries before.

Finally, we added some images of leaves – manipulated by our photographer Laura Bennetto to reflect the style of Fox Talbot’s early leaf photographs. The actual images were provided by the Dr Alastair Culham at the University Herbarium and show the following native English varieties: oak, elm, ash, beech, willow, hawthorn, hazel, elder and apple. The leaf motif has also been used to decorate the new areas of glass in the Museum’s introductory area.

This has been a really fascinating gallery to work on and – because of its seeming simplicity – also quite a challenge. We took inspiration from many places and, made some fascinating discoveries along the way – not least David Hockney’s brilliant Yorkshire Wolds film. It has also been a really collaborative effort and one that has, we hope brought out the best of our creative, technical and curatorial skills.

Using history to help patients reminisce at Royal Berkshire Hospital

Written by Phillippa Heath, Audience Development Project Manager

One important aspect of the Our Country Lives Activity Plan is the strengthening of links with our close neighbours the Royal Berkshire Hospital. As  our Audience Development Project Manager, I’ve been involved in one particular aspect of this partnership: an innovative reminiscence project using the MERL collections as inspiration.

Therapist and Care Crew Manager Lyndsey Openshaw with hospital patients

Therapist and Care Crew Manager Lyndsey Openshaw with hospital patients

For a number of years the Royal Berkshire Hospital has been a regular destination for MERL staff on the search for lunches or mid-afternoon snacks from one of its many retail outlets. Interestingly, visitor evaluation of the museum before our closure suggested that this flow of people was reciprocated, with roughly 10% of our visitors coming from the Hospital. The Our Country Lives project is enabling us to formalise this relationship and explore what more can be done to raise awareness of the Museum for hospital patients, their families and hospital staff. The first part of this process has been a collaboration with patients, staff and volunteers of the Hospital’s Elderly Care Ward.

Initial conversations with staff over the Summer months quickly revealed an enthusiasm to use the MERL collections as a basis for reminiscence with patients. Reminiscence (or the use of life histories – written, oral, or both – to improve psychological well-being) is proven to have particular benefit for older people. Lyndsey Openshaw, Hospital Therapist and Manager of the Care Crew team, explains the benefits of reminiscence for this audience in more detail:

“Using physical objects and pictures to encourage older people, and those with dementia, to talk about old memories, is a wonderful way to bring back happy memories. It also helps us to facilitate conversations with the patients – which is hugely beneficial in their recovery, as some older people feel lonely.”

As part of the reminiscence sessions, patients experience MERL’s film and photographic collections

As part of the reminiscence sessions, patients experience MERL’s film and photographic collections

Formally launched in October, the project is inspired by one of the Museum’s new galleries: A Year on the Farm. A programme of fortnightly sessions has been devised, exploring different topics relating to a year in the countryside. With topics as diverse as Harvest, Sports and Pastimes and Gardening and Growing, sessions draw on the museum’s extensive film and photographic archive, using them as a starting point for conversations with patients.

 

The sessions are delivered jointly with hospital Chaplain Lorraine Colam, and frequently involve sensory experiences appropriate to the topic such as music, food, drink and handling opportunities. Many of the topics relate to activities or events which patients may have experienced in their lifetime, be they from rural or urban backgrounds. It is fascinating to hear so many different stories in relation the topics and, from the Museum’s point of view, it tells us so much about our collections and the public’s reactions to them.

Chaplain, Lorraine Colam, reminiscing with patients.

Chaplain, Lorraine Colam, reminiscing with patients.

 

Our most recent session focused on ‘Sports and Pastimes’, during which we watched the 1944 archive film, Twenty Four Square Miles. This film focused on the life of people living in one part of rural Oxfordshire and proved to be a great stimulus for memories. Photographs also resulted in some fascinating discussions (examples of which can be found below) .

 

Sessions will be continuing throughout the year, during which we are looking forward to many more fascinating conversations with patients and staff of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

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Picture of the month #4: Picking up the last of the Harvest

As our Photographic Assistant is on leave this week, I thought I would try and use our database to find a suitable harvest image. I have to admit I usually run straight to my colleagues in the reading room when I need something from the archives, so I was really pleased that the terms I used (MERL, archive, harvesting, Farmers Weekly) to narrow my search revealed (amongst many others) this beautiful – and local – picture… That was the extent of my researching ability, however, and University Archivist Guy Baxter came to my rescue to delve more deeply and find out more about the image… (Alison Hilton, Marketing Officer)

 

Picking up the last of the Harvest P_FW_PH2_H29_3 (2)

Picking up the last of the Harvest P_FW_PH2_H29_3 (2)

This photograph, by the Reading based photographer Eric Guy, shows “lodged wheat” being gathered up by hand in 1945. When a crop is “lodged” it means that it has been flattened by the wind, making it difficult to harvest. Eric Guy gave this photograph the caption “Picking up the last of the Harvest” but this particular print was not found in his own collection at MERL, but in the Museum’s Farmers Weekly’s picture library collection. In fact, the image was used in Farmers Weekly on 19 October 1945, with the following caption:

“The “Indian Summer” has enabled crops to be rescued in many parts of the country. This lodged wheat, on a farm in the Streatley Hills, near Basildon, Berks, was too much for the binder, but now it has been safely hand-gathered.”

A binder is a machine for reaping crops – now largely obsolete, as the combine-harvester does the job of both the binder and the threshing machine. For details of the binder on display at MERL, see the entry in our database 

Although at first glance the crop is being loaded onto an old farm wagon, a closer look reveals rubber tyres, and a tractor rather than a horse at the front.

 

Picture of the Month #3: Steam-powered buses

written by Caroline Benson, Photographic Asssistant

Anyone who has experienced public transport during the hot summer months may like these two photographs where air conditioning is readily available.

TR RAN ET3/24/10 - a Thetford Road Steamer

TR RAN ET3/24/10 – a Thetford Road Steamer from the 1870’s

They are both from an album in the archive of Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies Ltd held here at MERL. Both date from the early 1870s and show early steam powered buses. The first, TR RAN ET3/24/10, was manufactured by Charles Burrell of Thetford, who termed it a Thetford Road Steamer. This particular one was supplied to the Turkish government for operating a bus service on Crete. The second photograph TR RAN ET3/24/34 shows Nairns Patent Steam omnibus, manufactured in Edinburgh in 1870. An article in “The Engineer” of January 28th 1870 describes how the design “… was to preserve as much as possible the appearance of an ordinary omnibus so as more easily to overcome the prejudice of the public.” The article also adds that Mr Nairn’s patent principle “…deadens noise and gives most ample adhesion in frosty weather.” Definitely a necessity in Edinburgh I would imagine.

TR RAN ET3/24/34 - Nairns Patent Steam Omnibus

TR RAN ET3/24/34 – Nairns Patent Steam Omnibus from 1870

No “first” and “standard” class then, just different prices for outside, at  two pence and inside at three pence.

Picture of the Month #1: The John Tarlton Collection

written by Caroline Benson, Photographic Assistant.

The current temporary exhibition at MERL features the work of the photographer John Tarlton. This wonderful collection came to the museum in 2004 and  now, on the completion of the Rural Images Discovered Project,  we are ready to promote its full commercial potential.

A 'typical Essex college interior'

A ‘typical Essex cottage interior’

These two photographs showing domestic scenes & farmhouse interiors are quite a departure from Tarlton’s usual images. They are both quarter plate glass negatives and are amongst only a very few glass plates in the Tarlton Collection. I am often asked for interior shots by picture researchers and so I was particularly excited to find these – I was also pleased when the fireside image was used in the recently published Pitkin guide “Life on the Farm”.

'Typical Essex farmhouse kitchen showing C16th beams'

‘Typical Essex farmhouse kitchen showing C16th beams’

Little is known about the two photographs. The fireside image is described on the negative envelope as “Typical Essex cottage interior; farm bailiff & his wife” and the other as “Typical Essex farmhouse kitchen showing C16th beams.” I feel the longer I look at these two photographs the more I see, until I can almost hear the tick of the clock, and certainly the smell of pipe tobacco.