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List of The Archers characters

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ6599456
Source-derived summary

This is a list of characters from the long-running British radio soap The Archers.

The Archer family tree

The Archer family

Jill Archer née Patterson (born 3 October 1930) (Patricia Greene) is the widow of Phil Archer and matriarch of the family. She was his second wife, and with him had four children: twins Shula and Kenton, and David and Elizabeth. She is busily involved in village life and supports her children by taking on child-minding duties. Jill is an active member of the Women's Institute, opened up a holiday cottage business, and is teaching her grandson, Josh, how to keep bees. Jill has a less traditional outlook on life than her late husband, who had been a Justice of the Peace, reflected in her opposition to both foxhunting and private education. Following a burglary at Glebe Cottage she was asked by David and Ruth to return to Brookfield which subsequently became permanent. In 2019, she surprised her family by announcing that she had met a new man – Leonard Berry, a widower whom she met while visiting the Laurels. Since then, Jill and Leonard have enjoyed a cosy companionship, complicated slightly when Leonard thought Jill wanted them to get married – when she made it clear that she had no desire to have another husband, they happily resumed their relationship.

Christine Barford née Archer, formerly Johnson (born 21 December 1931) (Lesley Saweard, formerly played by Pamela Mant and briefly Joyce Gibbs), is the younger sister of Phil.

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This entry incorporates text from List of The Archers characters” 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.