Pat Sugden
fictional character from Emmerdale
Patricia Ruth "Pat" Sugden (also Harker and Merrick) is a fictional character from the British soap opera Emmerdale, played by actresses Lynn Dalby in 1972 and 1974. Helen Weir took over the role when Pat was reintroduced as a regular character in 1980. Pat's main stories are her marriages to violent drunk, Tom Merrick (Dave Hill) and later Jack Sugden (Clive Hornby). One of Pat's most prominent storylines involved the reveal of her son, Jackie Merrick (Ian Sharrock), being Jack's biological son. Weir and Hornby began a relationship off-screen and later married. Weir became pregnant and writers decided to make Pat also pregnant and she gives birth to Robert Sugden. Producers offered Weir an additional two-year contract to remain in Emmerdale but she declined their offer. Weir later revealed that her decision came from a dispute with producers over the inclusion of her and Hornby's son playing the role of Robert. Producers decided to kill Pat off in a car accident story and she made her final appearance during the episode broadcast on 26 August 1986.
Development
Creation and characterisation
Pat is characterised as a "passionate and strong minded" woman.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7144050. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972, 1974, 1980 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pat Sugden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.