Our Country Lives - MERL closes for refurbishment

Monday, 20 October 2014

Artist's impression of the Wagon Walk

In June this year the Museum of English Rural Life (Merl) was awarded a grant of £1.7m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to start on the Our Country Lives project. The museum will close on 31st October for redevelopment and reopen at the beginning of 2016.

Although the galleries will be closed to the public for approximately a year, other parts of the building will remain open to staff, students and to the public, including the reading room at the University‘s Special Collections, the staircase hall and meeting rooms.

The refurbished Museum will explore the relevance of rural life, past and present, to our modern and urban lives, explaining its vital place in addressing questions of identity, environment, sustainability and health.

Isabel Hughes, Curator at MERL said: "We are very excited to be getting the ball rolling. Although the galleries will be closed to the public, staff will be very busy finalising plans and then creating the new Museum. We'll also be recruiting new staff and volunteers to help with all aspects of the redevelopment, including several community projects which will start during the coming months.

"The Museum will be shut but staff will definitely not be shutting up! There will be lots of interesting work going on behind the closed doors and we will be sharing as much as possible with the public via our blog and social media. Keep up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, and look out for details of regular special events."

More information about the MERL redevelopment project, as well as what events and community projects are taking place during the closure, is available on the ‘Our Country Lives' blog.