138

maseívms in the UnitedKingdom

Edward L. Hawes

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (United States) in 1936. Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1971, in European s o d a l history, with a thesis on Central European agrarian history. Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois (United States). Developed interpretive and educational programmes for the university’s Clayvfle Rural Life Center (Director, 1978-80) and for the Freeport Historical Society’s Harraseeket Coastal Farm Pro- ject in Maine. Author of artides on living history museum theory and practice in Acta Museonrm Agrìculturae and the Annud Proceedings of the Assockfion for Liuing Hziionkal Fams und Agrìd- tztrd Nrtseums. Served as president (1978-80) and board member of the Association for Living Histori- cal Farms (1978-83) and is currently a member of the Presidium of the International Association of Agricultural Museums (1978-84).

A fine ferment of new ideas and practices is changing British museums of agricul- ture and rural life. The quality of the ferment is largely due to the arrival of curators dissatisfied with the static con- ceptions which prevailed in the past, and who seek new directions in research, col- lection development, exhibition and in- terpretation.

Some directions are clearly associated with certain types of museums; others are common to several. Country-life and folk museums are exploring new display can- cepts and techniques to relate their col- lections to landscape and social context. ‘Working’ museums have been estab- lished which demonstrate farming and household activities. The concepts of in- dustrial archaeology and living history have entered the grounds of open-air museums, resulting in natural linkages of agricultural and industrial life.

The new developments are based on serious research in ethnology and social history, drawing in particular from the archival resources being assembled in regional museums. The concepts of re- search and collection are being expanded with the development of experimental history and archaeology on the one hand, and the working museum on the other. Serious debate is being conducted on the ethics and safety factors involved in using collections for demonstration and in replicating farming systems of the past. The questions of how to collect and preserve artefacts of more recent and present-day rural culture and how to in- terpret change are receiving the attention of many younger professionals.

Historically, as Dr Sadie Ward of the Museum of English Rural life pointed out, there have been two tendencies in the interpretation of the rural past in museums in the United Kingdom. One of these looks at everything up to 1914 as evidence of traditional life patterns; the other considers everything after 1750 as evidence of scientific progress. Today, many museums which embody these ap- parently contradictory tendencies are be- ing revitalized and the contradictions between the approaches are being re- solved, resulting in more accurate and provocative views of.the past. Moreover,

the importance of soils and topography in forming the agricultural patterns of a region is being emphasized, as well as the significance of changing agricultural technology, both traditional and mod- ern, in shaping the landscape.

RuraZ techzodogy in ìts context

Country- and folk-life museums still focus on collecting and exhibiting tools and implements largely from the nine- teenth century, those operated by the energy of humans and draught stock. But they are moving beyond simply presen- ting rural technology in isolation. The Upper Dales Folk Museum offers a fine example. It is set in a former goods depot or freight station of the abandoned railway line at Hawes, a market town and tourist centre at the head of Wensleydale in Yorkshire. Through the skilful ar- rangement of artefacts, photographs and text, visitors are encouraged to explore the importance for the people in the area of sheep husbandry, dairying, lead mining and hand knitting at various periods in the past. (Fig. 25.)

The Museum of English Rural Life at Reading, near London, is another exam- ple of the new directions. Founded in 1951, the museum had long believed it appropriate to allow artefacts shown together in seasonal and functional con- text to speak for themselves with no labels. Its substantial collections in storage and modest exhibits of agricul- tural tools, wagons, rural trades and household artefacts are of importance for the United Kingdom as a whole, and in- deed it has been regarded from the start as a countryside museum with a national scope. Its new permanent exhibit hall devoted to change in agricultural tech- nology up to 1945, designed under the direction of the keeper, Roy Brigden, breaks new ground. It has a dual theme: change on the farm, and change in the production of farm equipment.

1. Sadie B. Ward, ‘Agriculture and Museums inEngland from 1800 to the Present Day’, Acta iCíu~eorum Agnk.d.tr~rue (Prague), Vol. XIV, Nos. 1 - 2 , 1 9 7 9 , ~ ~ . 111-16. Forperspective, thereader will find it useful to compare this artide with that of Frank Arkinson, ‘New Open-air Museums’, NUJU~, Vol. XXIII. No. 2, 1970/71, pp. 99-102.

New directions i iz agriculture adrur&$ museums in the Ur2itedKingdom 139

After the ‘Village Technology’ section (see Fig. 26) comes a display of barn machinery, threshers, cutters and other machines used to process crops, and ‘horse engines’ which produced power for them. The oldest surviving cultivating gear with plough, cables and steam engine is displayed along with reproduc- tions of pages from agricultural journals of the time showing the production and use of this type of nineteenth-century high technology. The next two sections are devoted to agricultural engineering with various implements displayed against background photographs of the factory interiors where they were made and enlargements of advertising materials. The exhibition concludes with an area devoted to ‘Mechanical Farming’. An International Harvester petrol- powered tractor of the second decade of the century, a 1938 Fordson and a 1947 Ferguson with three-point hitch are ex- hibited against photographs showing their use in the field together with smaller illustrations from catalogues. Both the new exhibition and the older countryside-life gallery are effectively linked through an interpretive booklet which explores the themes of tradition and change.2

The great strength of the museum is its collection of tools and implements of traditional farming and the ‘improving’ agriculture, assembled in the 1950s and 1960s when such items were readily available. Its classification scheme has long served as the standard by which other rural-life museums have developed theirs. The museum is physically and organizationally located in the Institute of Agricultural History, a division of the University of Reading, where outstand- ing archives of photographs and prints, of business and engineering records, adver- tising and other trades materials, and records of agricultural organizations are being built up. It also has what is prob- ably the finest library for the study of British agricultural history.

The themes of tradition and change are also being developed in the exhibitions at the new Scottish Agricultural Museum installed in 1980 at the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society’s Showgsound

2. The Museum ofEnglish RuralLife, Reading, University of Reading, 1983.16 pp. Unless otherwise noted, the author has conducted (at leastonce) on-site studies of all the museums discussed in this artide.

3. G i d e to the Imtitute ofAg~culturd History azdthe Afusesm ofEfzghh Rura/Life, Reading, University ofReading, 1982,102 pp. (unpaginated).

25 UPPER DALES FOLK MUSEUM, Hawes, (United Kingdom). Agricultural implements interpreted with enlarged action photographs of their use: a farmer using a local form of the flip-flop rake. On the other side of this aisle, where no artefacts are displayed, is a text and picture panel. Here the visitor discovers that the photograph is a much enlarged detail of one on the panel revealing that the farmer is working in an upland meadow. A stone barn and wall are in the background, and in the distance the highland moors, all of which are typical features of the Yorkshire Dales landscape. The text explains that the rake was important in increasing productivity and that the barn was commonly situated away from the farmstead in the upland meadow and was used for hay storage and livestock in the winter. These alongwith the distant fells, as the moors are called locally, are shown to be elements of afarming system which still dominates the landscape.

140

at Ingliston not far from Edinburgh. The beginnings of the museum go back to the 19Gos when, under Alexander Fenton, the theme of the County Life Section to a degree parallels that of the Institute of Agricultura! History at Reading, for the museum conducts research on the re- gional ethnology of Scotland, and is as- sembling an oral history and photo- graphic archive, and a library. Thus, it is the principal centre for studying the his- tory of agriculture and rural life in Scot- land.

Given the great size of its collections, the museum decided to divide the available space between permanent exhi- bitions and temporary ones that elaborate on the former. This policy has a threefold objective: first, gradual resto- ration of the agricultural collections to field working condition; second, even- tual exhibiting of most of the artefacts; third, encouragement of repeat visits by the public. Along with the exhibition space there is a fully equipped wood- working shop and near by a machine shop for the restoration of equipment.

Because the Scottish Agricultural Museum began in the 1970s, when inter- pretation was increasingly regarded as important, the exhibits are all designed to reveal the technological, economic and social context. As its keeper, Gavin Sprott, stated in the spring of 1983, ‘Ob- jects do not necessarily speak for themselves. If you leave it at that, they will merely be curios, and the museum just an antique dealer’s showroom.’ Go- ing further, he quoted the novelist E.P. Hartley who said: ‘The past is like a foreign country’, and declared that: ‘It is

. the job of the museum to penetrate that barrier, give folks the sense of peering in- to a strange life they have never seen before, both with objectivity and insight. ’ The museum has to spin ‘a web of rela- tionships, showing how all the various factors interlock’ .*

The permanent exhibit on cultivation creatively links presentation of the tra- ditional and the popular cultures, and gives a clear conception of change in the countryside and of the interrelationships of social structure, technology and land- scape. There are two sections: one con- siders technology, field form and the lord/ tenant relationship in a traditional context; the other presents the growth of the system of large tenancies, the development of ploughs designed for ef- ficient use on these holdings, the breeding of more productive livestock, the changes in the context of production

of agricultural equipment and the changes in the patterns on the land. The display does not reinforce the crude myth of Progress, for it points out the utility and efficiency of the simpler equipment for the smaller holding of pre-improve- ment times, and hints at the economic and social costs of the changes of the nineteenth century.

Working mnseums of farming

The working museums of farming which have been developed over the past ten years in the United Kingdom are among the most significant developments in agricultural museology . Household, farmyard and field activities are demon- strated and discussed by staff and volunteer interpreters in the context of farmhouse and farmyard, and sometimes there are actual field demonstrations as well. In contrast to the situation in North America at some of the ‘living history’ farms, as they are termed there, where farming is carried on month after month either in full or reduced scale, most of the British ones carry out the activities piecemeal - relying on exhibits of farm equipment and spoken interpretation to give a sense of the whole.

The working farm museums present agricultural life in a more functional perspective, attempting to communicate the changes in traditional culture and the coming of popular, industrialized culture. The Church Farm Museum in Lincolnshire, opened in 1977, is located in the North Sea resort community of Skegness in the midst of subdivisions on two acres of land. It is designed to inter- pret life on a small farm in the area just after the nirn of the twentieth century. The Cogges Manor Farm museum located close to Oxford is a more ambitious at- tempt to show not only the processes of household life but those of the farmyard and field, and with nineteen acres at its disposal, it expects to be able to move gradually in this direction. A stone manor house with portions dating back to the seventeenth century is the centre of household activities. The farm kitchen, dining room and dairy are restored with an appropriate working inventory of artefacts and reproductions of the early twentieth century or the. Edwardian period, as it is termed. A walled veg- etable and flower garden are used ac- tively in the living history interpretive programme along with the interior space. Special-event days offer visitors oppor- tunities to experience cooking and food

preservation, butter-making, and other household-related activities and crafts. The stone barn and other farm buildings serve to exhibit agricultural implements, to shelter livestock and to store fodder. The museum has Shorthorn cattle and other livestock appropriate to the period interpreted in the farmhouse. Rural ac- tivities such as sheep-shearing, hurdle- making, thatching and blacksmithery are demonstrated on certain days (Fig. 29). At the present time no crops are grown, though the museum’s master plan en- visions a working farm of the early twen- tieth century in the future.

Museum people in the United King- dom have found, as have their colleagues in North America, that historic farming is not something into which an institution should rush.5 Intensive research is necessary to determine the correct equip- ment, crops and livestock, the accurate methods of arable farming and animal husbandry, as well as the larger economic context for the locality at a particular time. All of this has to be linked with household activities, which also need considerable research. Then the proper seed and livestock have to be found, along with artefacts or reproductions. Staff have to be found with both skills and interest in historical farming and household management, and the ability to interpret them to the public. Such people are very rare, and what most farm- ing museums have to do is assemble a staff with complementary talents which are blended in order to give a comprehen- sive representation of rural life. Given the appeal that this type of museum has to adult visitors and schoolchildren, it is quite likely that working farms will in- crease over the next ten years.

Open-air museums

A much more established direction in British museums dealing with agriculture

4. Gavin Sprott, ‘AnOpen Air Museum for Scotland’, p. 2, unpublishedpaper delivered to the Conference ofthe Scottish Country Life MuseumTrust, spring 1983. This account is based on visits to the Country Life Section in Edinburgh, talks with Alexander Fenton over the years, communication with Gavin Sprotr (letter of 21 October 1983, especially) and the mimeographed text of the labels of the exhibits described.

5. The artide by John T. Schlebecker below presents the essentials about the living history farm movement in North America. See also articles by Edward L. Hawes which have appeared in the ActaMldseomm Agriculturae, Vol. XIV,

Nos. 1-2,1981/82,pp. 37-50. SeealsoJ. Patrick Greene, ‘Independent and Working Museums in Britain’,ItlusezlmsJozlntal, Vol. 83, No. 1, 1983,

NOS. 1-2,1979, pp. 62-76,117-47; Vol. XVI,

pp. 25-8.

New directions in amLahare andruriallhYë museams in the UnitedKin d o m 141

L_ ., _. .. . . . . . . . . ” ._

is the open-air museum, usually coupled with an indoor museum. Wales has an ex- ample, a long-recognized folk museum, St Fagans, with two sections for the public: an open-air museum with tra- ditional farm structures moved in and an in situ: manor house; an indoor folk-life museum which explores the themes of tradition and change. The roots of the museum go back to the 1930s and the work of Iowerth C. Peate. The museum opened in 1947 on a 100-acre site just outside Cardiff. Like the Museum of English Rural Life and the Scottish Agricultural Museum, its work is foun- ded upon on-going collection of oral history and folk-life, photographic and documentary materials. The Agricultural Gallery was opened in 1974 in a pleasing contemporary museum building. Just as at other museums taking the new direc- tions, artefacts are interpreted using writ- ten, photographic and graphic materials to explain their use and the technological context. The exhibition is organized on a seasonal work theme. This results in an interesting contrast to the approach of the Museum of English Rural Life in its new gallery where the primary themes are the changing contexts of farm and factory production, and so equipment with simi- lar functions is shown in different areas. At St Fagans, the activity is the focus; therefore both traditional and modern implements are displayed together. For example, in the exhibit on land drainage, earthenware field tiles are shown next to plastic pipe; trenching spades are placed

next to a mole plough; early and recent literature on drainage is included as ex- planatory material. The cultivation sec- tion focuses on technology, with ex- amples ranging from eighteenth-century wooden ploughs to a 1941 Fordson trac- tor. The harvest exhibit shows early scythes and a late-nineteenth-century mower, the ‘Milwaukee’.

The open-air section of St Fagans has been operated using the Scandinavian concept for some years. A fine example is the Cilewent unit-farmstead, or long house, which combines dwelling, cattle barn and horse stable in one structure. Its walls and roof are of a whitewashed shaly stone, and of a form typical of the Welsh moorlands. The interior of the house por- tion is furnished with eighteenth-century artefacts which, given their age and value, could not be used for living-history programmes. Lately, however, the mu- seum has started moving in the new directions. Land with a whole farmstead which was in use until recently was ac- quired adjacent to the entrance. The site will be developed to interpret life on a small farm at the end of the nineteenth century. Since its buildings reveal con- tinual evolution in form and function throughout the whole century, change can be interpreted their effectively. Development will proceed slowly and carefully, with completion projected in ten years.

Like open air museums elsewhere, St Fagans offers a programme of special events from sheep-shearing to threshing

26 MUSEUM OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE, Reading (United Kingdom). Entrance to the new exhibition, Farming in the Industnd Age, which shows the transition from village-produced technology to that from farm-implement firms. The visitor enters the hall and sees what appears to be a traditional plough, backed up with a primary label ‘Village Technology’, and a photograph of a farmer using one of the ploughs. The secondary label points out that until the mid-nineteenth century equipment was commonly made in village workshops following local traditions. Even after 1

agriculture began to be industrialized, some small fims continued to follow the traditional forms until this century (the plough on exhibit is a ‘turnwrest’ plough used in Kent and Sussex). Close by are farm wagons, other ploughs and quotations from farming books of the period enlarged on wall panels.

27 WELSH FOLK MUSEUM, StFagans, CardB, Wales (United Kingdom). Dry- stone walllayingin the open-airmuseum to re-create the historical landscape.

28 GREENHILL CONVENANTERS’ HOUSE, Biggar, Scotland (United Kingdom). Restoration after moving of this seventeenth- c e n m r y f ~ ~ o u s e by young people^ the national employment training programme.

with steam power. But it goes further than some with demonstrations of hedge cultivation and maintenance, and the laying of dry-stone walls (Fig. 27). These have two purposes: to give the feel of a working museum and to create an im- pression of the Welsh landscape. The presence of historic breeds of livestock, including Black Welsh Mountain and Llanwenog sheep and Welsh Black cattle, enhance this impression. There are plans

industrial contexts. Some equipment is used in working demonstrations. The museum is fortunate enough to have ac- quired the home of a farm bailiff‘s family in the town. The widow moved out in 1975 leaving almost all the accumulated possessions; thus the museum gained a time capsule of a particular family in the twentieth century. There are plans to open it to school groups in the not-too- distant future. The museum utilizes all

to develop the interpretation of wood- land activities, and in the historical farm- stead, of gardening activities as welL6

In contrast to Wales, England and Scotland have only regional museums. Some of these follow the Scandinavian model closely, possessing collections of structures which have been moved to the site and restored to a period in a park-like landscape.

The Museum of East Anglian Life was started in 1965 as essentially a country- side museum with collections of wagons, craft tools and farm equipment. In the early 1970s, the museum, located on a seventy-acre site at Stowmarket, 130 km north-east of London, began to move in endangered structures to give a larger representation of East Anglian life. The fourteenth-century core of an aisled-hall house was moved and made into an education centre; a blacksmith’s shop was brought to the museum and now is in regular use for demonstrations; an eighteenth-century water-powered flour mill and related structures on the site of a planned reservoir were disassembled and then re-erected in the museum grounds close to the River Rattlesden.

Recently, the East Anglian Museum has begun to move in the new directions. Farming, trades, merchandising and domestic life are shown together with ob- jects produced in both the traditional and

these resources in a full programme of special events, including not only the ones familiar to visitors of open-air museums (spinning, weaving, sheep- shearing, etc.), but also others devoted to vintage motor-cars, late-nineteenth-cen- tury music and community festivities.’

South of Edinburgh, in the town of Biggar, is a regional open-air museum, operated by the Biggar Museum Trust, which recently moved a seventeenth-cen- tury house, Greenhill, stone by stone to a new site in a bowl-shaped town park (Fig. 28). It is interpreted as the farm home of a family who were part of the resistance in the 1670s to the imposition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer upon the Presbyterian majority in Scotland. Three rooms form period settings in-

6. The author visited S t Fagan’s in 1976, and has based this section on that experience; conversations over the years with Elfyn Scourfield, Keeper, Department of Farming and Rural Life; a letter from him of 12 October 1982; an article by him entitled ‘The Interpretation ofFarmingin Wales’, ActaMtiseonsm Agrzkulturae, Vol. XII, Nos. 1-2,1977, pp. 116-32. Anarticle by E. William, ‘The Interpretation ofvernacular Architecture in Wales, Part 1’, pp. 77-9, Cardiff, NationalMuseum ofWales, 1982, was also useful.

7. Mziseism ofEastAnglz2n Life, Huntingdon, n.d., 16pp. Theauthorhasnotpersonallyvisited this museum and has relied upon this booklet, materials gathered in 1978, conversations with the keeper in that year, and information from the current director, Rob Shorland-Ball (letter of 11 October 1983).

New directions in agriculture andrural-l$e museums in the UnitedKìngdom 143

cluding the kitchen which is fully func- tional with a usable fueplace ‘and an in- ventory of nineteenth-century food-pre- paration and preserving equipment. One upstairs room is devoted to documents and books related to the history of religion and daily life in the seventeenth century, as well as artefacts excavated from the site where the house originally stood until 1975. Greenhill is an excel- lent example of a portion of a museum being used to assert a regional, indeed from a Scots perspective a national, iden- tity. To give an impression of the histori- cal landscape, the museum recently began keeping rare breeds of Scottish island sheep such as Soays and St Kildas in the fields dose to the house. There are plans to reconstruct an appropriate set of outbuildings and farmyard, but at this point there are no plans for historical farming.

The National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland has serious plans to develop a national open-air museum which will go beyond the Skansen concept as well as that of the working museum. ‘One of the most important things,’ declared Gavin Sprott in his talk in spring 1983 ‘is to establish a continuity of certain practical skills.. . the continuation of living skills into the future, so that like breeds of plants - like old native strains of tatties - or like rare animals, they are not lost to the stock of civilization.’8

A museum which combines several of the new directions is Beamish, located south-west of Newcastle. Its purpose is to ‘illustrate the historical development of industry and the way of life of the North of England’, as its Development Plan states. Beamish is an open-air museum, which in addition to preserving and ex- hibiting farm buildings has moved in structures which re-create the industrial and urban-built environment of the re- gion over time. It is a working museum with both static exhibits and live demon- strations. Historically, in this densely set- tled region, coal mining and farming have gone on within eyesight of each other and interpreting both activities is natural. From the larger perspective it is a fitting combination as well, because the transformation of agriculture in the nineteenth-century was closely linked with industrial development. Thus, the museum is both geographically and his- torically on solid ground, and well able to communicate about stasis and change, traditional and popular cultures in ways which could make it the envy of other open-air and country-life museums.

The Home Farm has substantial brick structures grouped around two yards, with horse- and steam-engine houses, a forge, stables and pigsties. Portions of the structures are used for exhibits of farm machinery, wagons and carts, and of the development of livestock husbandry. Other portions are used for farm pur- poses, housing pigs, chickens and horses. The farmstead is located on the south- west edge of the museum grounds along the main entrance road. The public can get there either by walking or taking a tram from the visitors’ centre. The tram, as well as a train pulled by an operating steam locomotive, are part of the working collections on exhibit. The train goes to a station in the north-west part of the grounds which includes the familiar parts of the railway environment in the United Kingdom: station, signal box, wrought- iron bridge, goods shed, and coal- and lime-drop buildings.

The environment of the coal-mining country is recreated not far from the Home Farm in the southern part of the grounds. A stone engine house, coal tip- ple with screen house and a demonstra- tion drift mine form part of the complex. The other is made up of a row of stone pit cottages, the homes of miners’ families, with their gardens and outhouses. The cottage interiors have been restored to different periods, the latest being the 1930s, permitting the visitor to gain a sense of the varying material culture of ordinary people through time. One of the cottages has regular living history food demonstrations. In the north-east part of the grounds, a typical town centre of the North Country is being created by moving in various brick structures in- cluding a co-operative store, a fEh-and- chip shop, a chemist’s shop, a bus sta- tion, and a row of Georgian houses.

Development, in all its aspects, is very much a part of the museum’s outlook as it is of other museums in the United Kingdom. In the future Beamish plans to create a working farm with a mixed system typical of the end of the horse- drawn era, 1914-18, to be located to the south-east around the in sita ten- ant farmstead. It possesses expanding behind-the-scenes collections as well as growing ones on display. It actively seeks help from volunteers for all sorts of tasks. It searches out local people who can give oral histories of activities common in the North. The museum was planned in part

8. Gavin Sprott, unpublishedtalk, 1983, pp. 6-7. ‘Tatties’ are potatoes in the local dialect.

29 COGGES MANOR FARM, Oxford(United Kingdom). John Rhodes describing thatching of a farm outbuilding, often demonstrated at special events. Rhodes was keeper of the museum at that time (March 1978) and is now Keeper of Antiquities for Oxfordshire County Museum Services.

144 EdwurdL. Hawes

30 I R O N A G E F A R M , ButserHill, Petersfield (United Kingdom). Reconstructinga round house on Butser Hill with experimental grain plots in the background.

to give a boost to the economy of the region, and has fulfiied that goal well. A report of the Parliamentary Select Com- mittee on Education, Science and the Arts states that Beamish has had 'a substantial impact on income and employment in the surrounding area'. The museum has received grants from the English Tourist Board to carry out a variety of projects. It has not been alone in receiving this support. So important to tourism does the Tourist Board regard museums that it has made grants to about 200 other museums and galleries in the past ten years.9

Certain developments on the periph- ery of the rural-life museums should also be noted here. The Butser Ancient Farm Project has a research area (closed to the public) at Butser Hill itself, which ar- chaelogical evidence shows has been in- habited for at least the last 3,000 years. Under the directorship of Peter Reynolds, the principal goal is to operate an ex- perimental farm focused on the Iron Age (c. 300 B.C.) to test the validity of theories about farming, house construction, food storage and other activities based upon archaeological and documentary evi- dence. The findings are interpreted to the public in a reconstructed farm a few miles away in the Queen Elizabeth Park on a major highway south-west of Lon- don.

Butser Hill's findings are fascinating, surprising and controversial. Reynolds and his staff are actively testing out arch- aeological theories about the construc- tion and use of round houses and pits for various purposes, and about how crops were grown and harvested. Arch- aeological clues come into focus in the process. For instance, excavations of

presumed house sites commonly reveal curved slots in the ground in an outer ring around an inner ring of post holes (Fig. 30). It became apparent that these were probably for the butt ends of the rafters to be set into and adjusted. Another example is the single post holes with traces each of a shallow dished hollow found at Iron Age farm sites. The Butser theory, based on the experience with reconstructions, is that these were the locations of haystacks. Since the stacks were built off the ground on a bed of timber and brushwood around a central post, the ground below them sank because the plants below died and the soil shrank. lo

The work at Butser Hill is carried out with a spirit of exploration predomi- nating and a devotion to scientific ac- curacy. The field experiments in grain growing have indicated that the yields of primitive varieties of wheat like emmer and spelt may have approached those of today per unit of land. Following arch- aeological clues, the seed is row drilled rather than broadcast.; grain head and stalk are harvested separately. The fmd- ings are revising the picture of Iron Age life: rather than providing a living on the edge of subsistence, Iron Age farms pro- duced a surplus, Reynolds believes. The archaeological evidence being uncovered

9. As quoted i n ~ k s e i ~ m News, The Journdof NutionulHeritage, No. 25,1982183, p. 1. The author last visited Beamish in February 1978, and has drawn on that experience; letters fromJohn Gall, Keeper ofDevelopmentandRuralLife; The Devel'opmenbPlun andavisitor survey; on successive editions of its Guide Book (the current one is entitled Beumirh, The Geut Northern Expenmce, 32 pp.).

10. PeterJ. Reynolds, ButserAncienf Fum, Impressions, Petersfield, 1980.45 pp.. approx. 45 illustrations. Seepp. 5,33. The authorvisited the research farm inJuly 1983.

New directiom in agh,dture andruml-l$e muJezI71z.r ik the UnitedKingdom 145

elsewhere indicating that there were many Iron Age farm communities and that therefore population density was greater than suspected makes environ- mental sense in the light of these find- ings. As might be imagined with the

. evidence of these yields, Reynolds is somewhat sceptical of modern farming with its high energy costs and devotion to monoculture.

The second development on the per- iphery of rural-life museology is the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, an assyiation of people interested in preserving ‘declin- ing breeds’ of livestock. The group does not just simply aim to preserve these as curiosities for the public to see in rare- breed parks, but also for use by livestock- raisers to bring back or introduce desired genetic characteristics into selectively bred and overly specialized cattle, pigs and sheep. These parks are a kind of zoo often associated with stately homes open to the public or working farm museums such as Acton Scott. The trust is designed to serve as a communication network for these. But it also actively serves as agent for those breeding less-specialized stock more suited to diverse conditions than is much of modern livestock. Stock-raisers in North America and Europe buy the animals to introduce into their herds characteristics which, for instance, enable them to survive better on poorer pasture with less need for veterinary attention. The trust has established a gene bank for rare breeds of cattle and collects semen from a wide selection of bulls. It has developed a computer data-storage sys- tem to monitor the level of inbreeding and to formulate breeding programmes.

One of the most significant efforts of the Rare Breeds Trust and one with no immediate economic significance has been the preservation of the North Ronaldsay sheep. The sheep of this iso- lated island in the Orkneys north of the Scottish mainland became adapted to

subsistence on certain seaweeds on the coast. Theirs was a unique adaptation, and when the human population of the island dwindled, the survival of the Ronaldsay sheep was placed in jeopardy for they needed active management. At this point the trust, led by Larry Alder- son, its founder, moved many of the sheep to an inhabited island where they could be properly cared for. The fasci- nating story is told in successive issues of The Ad, the group’s journal, one of the several newer publications in the field of agricultural museology definitely worth knowing about.”

Unansweredquestìom

These then are the new directions of thought and practice in museums of agri- culture and rural life in the United King- dom.12 There are many unanswered questions. The debate about directions is lively and is likely to continue to be so. Museum people are asking what are the best ways to represent agriculture and rural life of the past in the museum con- text. Both the country-life museums with their focus on traditions and agricultural- museums which emphasize progress, in- dustrialization and scientific farming have their limitations. How can tradi- tional and popular culture be best represented and interpreted? How far should and can the working farm go in re- creating the past? What is the role of the museum in research techniques using ex- perimental archaeology and history, in preserving old breeds and old crop var- ieties? Should the farm museums yield to the temptation of showing the end of the horse-drawn era with collecting so easy and the public so interested? If so, should artefacts or reproductions be used? Should earlier periods be represented and how? Should museums do more to show life in the past forty years?

What about the present and future?

How can museums collect from the bewildering array of items available today for farms and people living on them? How can the character of the social and environmental context of .today be represented? Should agricultural and rural-life museums try to show directions for the future? As in North America, some people believe they should. Others think we cannot predict the future and museums should stay away from such ef- forts. Still others declare that in the very act of choosing what to represent about the future we limit our vision of what the future will be. The present with its issues and visions has definitely intruded itself into museums of agriculture and rural life in the United Kingdom as it has in the United States and Canada in all sorts of ways. The past will never be the same. Simply exhibiting objects or demon- strating period activities is likely to sat- isfy neither a more critical public nor im- aginative museum staff. The future cer- tainly will be exciting, for the ferment is excellent.

11. See TheArk, Vol. 6,1979, pp. 155-7; Vol. 7,1980, p. 335; Vol. 8,1981, pp. 342-8; VOL 9, 1982, pp. 167-8. Address: Marketplace, Haltwhistle, Northumberland NE49 OBL (United Kingdom).

12. Editor’s note: the author’s original artide contained a discussion, omitted here for lack of space, of some of the concerns expressed in publications by specialists involved in such museum work. These concerns indude how to develop and care for representative collections of today’s agricultural technology, the use and conservation of collections in working farm museums, and general safety considerations. Reference wyas made to the following publications of specialized groups: APGNews [Oxford), August 1980 (earlier AiAG News, April 1973-79); Transmtiom, itizrseum Professioonal Group, No. 16, 1981 (earlier, Truzsactiom, Museum Arristaizts’ Group, No. 6,1968 toNo. 15, 1978). Current editor’s address &Museum of Oxford, St Adlates, Oxford OX1 1D2 (United Kingdom). SHCG News (Social History Curator’s Group), No. 1, Winter, 1982183; earlier GRSMNews (Group for Regional Studies in Museums), No. 8, 1980; No. 9,1981. Current editoris Crispin Paine, c/o AMMSSEE, 34BusnersLane, Kiln Farm, MiltonKeynes, MKll3HB(United Kingdom).

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31 Pliny Freeman Farmstead, c. 1840.

John T. Schlebecker

Born in 1923. Ph.D. in History, University of Wisconsin, 1954. Taught at Montana University, and Iowa State University, 1954-65. Curator, Agri- culture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., from 1965 to the present. Secretary- Treasurer, Association for Living Historical Farms and Agricultural Museums, 1970 to the present. Author of Whereby 1Ve Thrive: A Hktory of AmeriGan Farming, 1607-1972, Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press, 1975.

When the living historical farms move- ment began in the United States in 1965, its originators wanted to show how farmers used their tools and implements in the past. Instead of seeing static ex- hibits in museums, people would actu- ally use the implements, or replicas. At the same time, the farms would exhibit the total agrarian milieu. The practice first began when the Canadians estab- lished Upper Canada Village at Morris- burg, Ontario, some time around 1964. So the story of living historical farms really concerns all of North America.

The intended social functions of these places was to inform an urban population about farming, especially past practices. At the same time, people of one region could learn about agrarian life in

another. Because North America devel- oped into an urban society rather late in its history, the need for explaining agri- culture appeared late as well. Only one or two generations ago nearly everyone in North America either had a relative or an acquaintance who farmed. Now, very few Americans have any contact with agricul- ture.

Vìews of farmers, views of kìstory

The intended social functions of living historical farms have met with some op- position from the rural community. Farmers object in a subdued and good- tempered manner, but they object just the same. Both the technological and social conditions of farming in North