The Rural History Centre
at the University of Reading turns 50 this year.
It was founded as the Museum of English Rural
Life, born from the rapid pace of change that
farming and the countryside had experienced
during the Second World War, change which looked
likely to continue following the passing of the
Agriculture Act in 1947. Members of the
University's Faculty of Agriculture were
concerned enough to want to preserve something of
the past, hence the museum's site at the
University and in Reading. Today the Rural
History Centre is a national centre for the study
of the history of agriculture and the countryside.
It has been recognised as such, by being awarded
Designated status.
The Victorian passion
for steam power saw the introduction of ploughing
machines on many of the larger farms.
Initially, the museum
built up collections of farm wagons, ploughs and
other artefacts of the horse-powered age of
agriculture.
Eric Guy's
photograph of the blacksmith at Stanford in the
Vale in the 1930s. One that really did have a
chestnut tree.
Field studies were
undertaken into country craftsmen, and the estate
villages of Ardington and Lockinge, which laid
the foundations for our collections of
photographs.
The 1960s and 1970s saw
the rapid expansion of archive collections, as
first farm records, then business records were
deposited, as well as large collections of
photographs. Today the archive holdings are of a
scale similar to many county record offices. The
Rural History Centre is a specialist
organisation, of course, but the range within the
collections is, nevertheless, quite wide. Among
the main groups of archives are the farm records
business diaries, accounts, labour books - from
about a thousand farms. The business records
include archives of a number of agricultural
engineering companies, such as the Wantage
Engineering Company and Wallis & Steevens of
Basingstoke. Other firms represented include
Suttons Seeds, with some documents going back to
the 1830s. Another group is the organisations
connected with agriculture, such as the National
Agricultural & Allied Workers Union and the
Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, a
charity founded in Victorian times which has
enjoyed unaccustomed prominence recently as a
result of its involvement in helping farmers
during the foot and mouth crisis. Then there are
the photographs. There are some very large
collections, including the photographic library
of Farmers Weekly. In all, there are more than
750,000 photographs. The earliest date from about
186o, but by far the majority are from the 1930s
onwards.
Some of these
collections contain documents that record the
names of individuals. There are registers of
employees included in the archives of a few of
the businesses. There are registers of some of
those who were assisted by the Royal Agricultural
Benevolent Institution in the nineteenth century.
By contrast, for example, there are no membership
registers for the agricultural workers' union in
the same period.
These archives can
further studies, broadening and deepening
knowledge of the life and work of past family
members. The employment registers might not
survive, but we can see the type of work people
might have been doing at the engineering works.
We can illustrate the products from catalogues
and photographs. The collections of photographs
clearly offer great potential as illustrations of
place and life in the countryside. Many of the
villages and towns of Berkshire and Oxfordshire
are featured in the local topographical
collections. These include the Dann & Lewis
collection, which features Reading in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century; Treacher
for the Twyford area, and Collier, who
photographed most of Berkshire's villages. Some
of these photographs date back to the 1880s, but
most are from the first half of the twentieth
century. Erie Guy photographed the agriculture of
the Thames Valley in the 1930s and 1940s, and
many of the locations are known. For those whose
studies take them further afield, there may still
be illustrations in our collections. Some of them
have particular local strengths: the Miss Wight
collection, for example, is concentrated on
Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
The library at the
Centre also holds many valuable research tools.
There are collections of publications by local
history groups from all round the country. The
county directories cover nearly all the country,
and there are runs of journals, such as Farmers
Weekly and Country Life.
Using the Centre
The research collections
at the Rural History Centre are open from 9.15 am
to 4.45 pm, Monday - Friday. Please make an
appointment with us first (address and telephone
number are at the end of the article).
Catalogues, lists and indexes are available, both
as traditional handlists and in computer
cataloguing. The computer catalogue is available
on-line through our website. The on-line
catalogue contains library, archive and artefact
entries, and a research bibliography containing
references to thousands of journal articles,
books and theses. If you are only interested,
say, in photographs, you can select that as a
search option.
We are happy to receive
enquiries by post, telephone and e-mail.
Remember, though, that we cannot do your research
for you. However, do not be afraid to ask
anything. We can guide you then as to what is
feasible, and any costs that might be involved.
Please allow respectable time for replies, as we
are few in number here.
The future for the
Centre
The Rural History Centre
is on the move. The long-projected plan for a new
home is progressing, although the designing,
redesigning and negotiating about it seem no less
protracted. However, we shall be moving to the
former St Andrews student hall of residence,
which will be converted to our needs. As a first
step a new archive store on a nearby site will
come into use later this year. We had a
successful appeal to raise part of the funds for
the development, and this appeal fund is still
open. The Heritage Lottery Fund have now granted
'stage 1' approval for funding, and the
university is committing very substantially to
the funds.
We are always glad of
support. You might like to join our mailing list.
You might like to join our team of volunteer
assistants. You might be able to help in cash or
kind with our development projects. If you would
like to know more, contact me at the Centre.
Jonathan Brown, Rural
History Centre, University of Reading,
Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AG.
Telephone 0118 931 8660;
fax 0118 975 1264
Email: 
Website www.ruralhistory.org
with any queries
