The Museum of English Rural Life

we would love to welcome you!

Visit Find out everything you need to know about planning a visit to The MERL galleries, shop, café, garden, or reading room.

people are saying it's the freest a museum has ever been

merl.reading.ac.uk/visit/#openi...

wdyt? could you do this?

free museum visit right now if you can

get to Reading, England

and enter The Museum of English Rural Life

<3 <3

The MERL's LATE events are always worth being on time for!

have you been looking for a reason to come to @themerl.bsky.social? here is a very good one

"Spring LATE. See The MERL after dark. Music, drinks, activities. 25 March 2026."

Tickets are now available for our next LATE! Join us after hours on the night of 25 March for drinks, activities, and talks.

£5 per person; £3 concessions for @uniofreading.bsky.social staff/students.

merl.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/spr...

@uorlgbtsociety.bsky.social thanks for sharing the blog friends <3

As far as I know, farm archives have never really been used to track queer histories before. Given they mostly record the financial ongoings on a given farm, you can understand why. However, my year of research at The MERL has proved their potential.

Find out more in this blog:

Absolute Units podcast - The Museum of English Rural Life Come for the big sheep. Stay for the history of rural England and its people.

For more about @timjerrome.bsky.social's research, check out the two episodes he recorded with us on Absolute Units!

merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/abso...

This is our second and final blogpost for LGBTQ History Month, following Lottie Wood's reflections on the life of E. M. Barraud last week!

bsky.app/profile/them...

Queer histories in the farm records What can farm records teach us about same-sex relationships? Researcher Tim Jerrome shares his work exploring queer rural experiences.

If you're researching queer history in England, farm records might be one of the last places you'd check.

Yet for #LGBTQHistoryMonth, @timjerrome.bsky.social shares how he's tracing queer histories within our farm archives, and gives tips for future research.

merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

thank you Andy, that's wonderful!

I've written her Wikipedia biography, citing and quoting your piece:

the baa will be duly reinstated - thank you for this useful feedback!

Detail of a presentation title slide onscreen reading: ‘Interest in cattle // IAS Seminar / 23 February 2026’

View from the river from a bridge in Durham.

Great to be here @durham.ac.uk Institute for Advanced Study, with colleagues from @durhamhistory.bsky.social and @durhamanthropology.bsky.social who share an ‘interest in cattle’. We love chatting about cattle @themerl.bsky.social (and we love going elsewhere to chat about them too).

thank you very much for featuring us, Ben!

#ScholarSunday Thread 264 (2/22/26) – Black and White and Read All Over Neither travel nor snowstorms can keep my #ScholarSunday threads from their appointed rounds—so here’s my 264th of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add m...

Neither travel nor snowstorms can keep my #ScholarSunday threads from their appointed rounds—so here’s my 264th of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ +

blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

<3 thank you always, Ian!

Recommended for dark evening

thank you so much!

This is just a really a beautifully written piece.

delighted you enjoyed your visit Stewart <3

I had the privilege of visiting the MERL today and getting a closer look at the board

This article also provides a lovely similarity to queer rural life in America. Plenty of queer people lived and loved in rural areas, finding community and living their authentic selves.

This is really interesting and echoes some of the arguments about spaces of possibility in the “rural turn” in LGBTQ histories of the USA

eg Skidmore’s “True Sex”

nyupress.org/978147987063...

🗃️

This was a lovely read. I'm so happy she found a place to be happy in a way she probably wouldn't have managed in the city.

I hadn't heard of this author before, but "having beaten my typewriter into a ploughshare for the duration, I shall never be able to face going back to town life" might be the greatest thing I've read this week.

A fantastic post from the Museum fo English Rural Life about one of our early writers. We're so pleased to see E.M. Barraud getting this recognition! Do give the article a read!