Museum Of English Rural Life

A plough, a sheep-shearing machine, a 19th-century horse-drawn carriage and a collection of oddly specific farming tools might not sound like museum treasures. Together, they tell the story of how people lived, worked and ate in the English countryside. The Museum of English Rural Life in Reading has been collecting these objects since 1951. Its collection covers everything from agriculture and crafts to rural transport, clothing and domestic life. Photographs, paintings, tools and machinery sit alongside larger objects, showing how farming and village life have changed over generations. It is a museum about ordinary things that turns out to contain a surprisingly big story.