(borrowed from [Taylor's website])
| Date: | Details: |
|---|---|
| 1896/10/15 | Daniel Archer born |
| 1898/05/27 | John Benjamin (Ben) Archer born |
| 1900/00/00 | Simone Delamain born, wife of Ben Archer |
| 1900/06/01 | Frank Archer born (Brother of Dan, married Laura Wilson) |
| 1900/07/11 | Doris Forrest born |
| 1902/01/10 | Edward George (Ted) Forrest born |
| 1910/10/20 | Tom Forrest born |
| 1911/08/29 | Laura Wilson born (Aunt Laura) |
| 1917/00/00 | Daniel Archer - a steady, respectful young man of twenty-one - getting one of the Squire's smaller farms to run. |
| 1918/00/00 | Daniel Archer walking out with Doris |
| 1919/07/19 | Jack Woolley born |
| 1920/12/17 | Daniel Archer marries Doris Forrest |
| 1921/07/27 | Pru Harris born |
| 1921/09/18 | Joe Grundy born |
| 1921/12/17 | Dan Archer married |
| 1921/12/17 | Doris Archer married |
| 1922/02/25 | Bunty Hebden born |
| 1922/12/17 | Jack Archer born |
| 1922/12/17 | Jack Archer born |
| 1924/08/17 | Julia Pargeter born |
| 1924/08/28 | Jethro Larkin born |
| 1924/11/13 | Margaret (Peggy) Perkins born |
| 1925/02/26 | Ralph Bellamy born |
| 1928/04/23 | Philip Walter Archer born |
| 1928/10/24 | George Barford born |
| 1929/04/02 | Grace Fairbrother born |
| 1930/09/28 | Grace Archer nee Fairbrother born |
| 1930/10/03 | Jill Patterson born |
| 1931/01/10 | Paul Johnson born |
| 1931/12/21 | Christine Archer born |
| 1939/00/00 | Young Philip wins a place at Borchester Grammar School, the first Archer to receive a full secondary education. |
| 1942/00/00 | Christine Archer gets scholarship to Borchester Grammar Scool, finally obtaining HSC with distinction in biology and a credit in chemistry. |
| 1942/00/00 | Jack serving in the army, meets a pretty young ATS girl, Peggy Perkins, who said she was a socialist. |
| 1943/01/17 | Jack Archer married to Peggy Perkins |
| 1943/04/05 | Robert Snell born |
| 1943/05/15 | Polly Perks born |
| 1943/11/20 | Brian Aldridge born |
| 1944/03/09 | Roger Travers-Macy born |
| 1944/06/09 | Sid Perks born |
| 1945/01/07 | Jennifer Archer born |
| 1946/06/07 | Lester Nicholson born |
| 1947/05/29 | Lynda Snell born |
| 1947/07/08 | Lilian Archer born |
| //1948/00/00// | //BBC in London plans a new ambitious drama serial (which turns out to be Mrs. Dale's Diary).// |
| //1948/06/03// | //"The idea for The Archers had come up two years before it was first transmitted at a meeting between farming representatives and the BBC in Birmingham's Council Chamber. The War had just ended and to help get the country back on its feet, the representatives were talking about giving out essential, up-to-date information in a popular way. A well-known Lincolnshire farmer, Henry Burtt of Dowsby, stood up and said 'What we need is a farming Dick Barton. Dick Barton was, at the time, a hugely successful adventure serial based on an intrepid special agent who got himself in some exciting, if sometimes improbable, scrapes. It is now part of radio history that Godfrey Basely, then a producer of gardening and agricultural programmes and later to become The Archers first editor, laughed with the rest of the people there at the silliness of the idea. But, unlike the rest of them, he didn't forget it. In fact, the idea kept popping into his head again and again until he felt impelled to follow it up. He knew, from his own experience, of the gentle excitement and interest which could be created around the everyday happenings on a farm or in a small country village, and had a notion that a skilful blending of such goings on with the more adventurous side of life might provide the ingredients for a new hit. Realising that he would need some skilled help with the drama side of things, he contacted the two Dick Barton script writers, Geoffrey Webb and Edward J Mason. He persuaded them to come on board. He then went on to secure approval for the five trial episodes from the head of Midlands programmes, Denis Morris. Next he recruited a splendid young sound engineer in Tony Shryane, who was later to produce the programme for 28 years, under three successive editors and the small team set to work. The trial episodes were very well received locally and led to the three month nationwide run starting in January 1951. Success indeed, but London expected Godfrey to produce the programme for a mere £47 an episode and to continue his other job at the same time. Tony Shryane was given the additional role of junior producer and a clerk was employed at £6 per week. Godfrey wrote and recorded an introductory trail to the national programme, which went out before it started, in which listeners heard the editor himself, microphone in hand, wandering around Ambridge talking to the characters as if they were real people. He went into Brookfield to take tea with Doris Archer and discussed the merits of 'that new fangled nuisance, the wireless' with scurrilous Walter Gabriel. No wonder that, to this day, some listeners think Ambridge really does exist. The trial national run was a great success, and within weeks the audience was two million. By Easter the serial had been moved to the Prime spot of 6.45pm. By May the audience was four million, and needless to say, the idea that this was an experimental pilot with a limited life rapidly disappeared. Tony Shryane was elevated to producer and Godfrey Basely wrote of his pride in the programmes dramatic success and, most importantly to him, the authenticity of its farming detail. he spoke also of the balance between big stories and the 'straightforward story of the daily happenings in the countryside'." The Archers: The Official Inside Story, The Changing Face of Radio's Longest Running Drama by Vanessa Whitburn. Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1996.// |
| //1949/00/00// | //First meeting between Godfrey Baseley, Ted Mason and Geoffrey Webb at Broadcasting House, Birmingham// |
| 1949/12/01 | Mike Tucker born |
| 1950/00/00 | Christine Archer, an outside milk sampler at the Ministry of Agriculture, was a bit flighty and always chasing after unsuitable men. |
| 1950/00/00 | Jack and Peggy could only scratch a living on a smallholding in the village. |
| 1950/00/00 | Philip Archer steady as a rock, farm manager for Mr Fairbrother, earning £1 a week more than the national weekly average, and going around with Fairbrother's daughter, Grace, who everybody said was nice young girl. |
| 1950/05/12 | Read through of the first five trial scripts. |
| 1950/05/14 | Recording Sound engineer: Tony Shryane |
| //1950/05/15// | //First rehearsal// |
| //1950/05/29// | //Whit Monday - First Midland Region episode entitled 'Archers of Wimberton Farm'.// |
| //1950/09/16// | //Three month trial agreed to run on Light Programme// |
| //1950/11/03// | //Gwen Berryman auditioned for Doris.// |
| //1950/12/00// | //Cast first meet each other in preparation for national programme. Recorded as 'Announcing The Archers'// |
| //1950/12/28// | //Broadcast// |
| //1950/12/28// | //first photo of cast, reading from scripts.// |
| 1951/00/00 | At Brookfield, Dan reluctantly decided to buy a tractor. He put Blossom out to grass and sold his other shire horse, Boxer, to Walter Gabriel. |
| 1951/00/00 | Autumn. Dan was disappointed by his sugar beet. The factory complained about dirt tare and said the beet had not been properly topped. In November he received another complaint, from the dairy, who said that Brookfield milk was low on butterfat content. Dan realized he had been feeding too many beet tops to the cows. |
| 1951/00/00 | Dan's shorthorn dairy herd became attested, giving him an extra fourpence a gallon for his milk. |
| 1951/00/00 | Dick Raymond interviewed Walter Gabriel about his experiences in the Home Guard, and how he once shot a scarecrow in mistake for an enemy parachutist. Walter said they'd be wanting him back now the Home Guard was being reformed. |
| 1951/00/00 | Doris revealed that Dan hated pyjamas and always wore a nightshirt. |
| //1951/00/00// | //First 'topical insert': reporting on budget provisions hours after its made public// |
| 1951/00/00 | In the autumn Bill Slater got into a fight outside The Bull, hit his head, and died. Dick Raymond found Latimer's diamond 'bit' in Mrs P's coalshed - Slater was obviously the saboteur. |
| 1951/00/00 | Jack Archer was offered a partnership in a 120 acre farm in Cornwall by his wartime friend Barney Lee. Doris was reluctant to see him leave Ambridge, particularly as she was so fond of her grandchildren, six-year old Jennifer, four-year old Lilian, and Anthony William Daniel who was not yet one. |
| 1951/00/00 | Keith Latimer became friendly with Christine Archer (who was already friendly with Dick Raymond, reporter on the Borchester Echo). |
| 1951/00/00 | Love affair between Christine and Basil Grove. |
| 1951/00/00 | Lt Carey went off to the Lake District, and Grace proposed to Phil. But he told her he was too fond of Jane Maxwell. |
| 1951/00/00 | Mrs P lodged in a cottage with Peggy's cousin, Bill Slater, a Londoner who suffered from asthma and had been advised to move to the country. He was given a job at Brookfield, but Dan found him a bad worker. |
| 1951/00/00 | Phil thought himself better off with Jane Maxwell, a tall, willowy blonde with blue eyes. He engaged her to look after the Fairbrother's poultry scheme. Grace was furious when she saw Phil and Jane in the woods on a rabbiting party, and later found Jane in Phil's arms late at night in the farm office. Phil ran after Grace, jumped onthe running board of her car, hit his head on a tree branch, and was knocked out. |
| 1951/00/00 | Phil was in love with his employer's daughter, Grace Fairbrother, but she was fascinated by Lt Alan Carey, a 24-year-old guest of Squire Lawson-Hope, who had been badly shot up in Korea and was now neurotic, bitter and anti-social. Grace found she could help him to regain his confidence in life. |
| 1951/00/00 | Returning home from watching Tilly of Bloomsbury in Borchester one night, Keith Latimer and Christine saw a saboteur running away from Latimer's drilling equipment, and found the diamond 'bit' was missing. Then, when reporter Dick Raymond was having tea at Brookfield, he phoned his office and accidentally overheard two saboteurs planning another attempt on the drill. Dick, Phil and Keith Latimer decided to wait for the saboteurs, and fought with them. |
| 1951/00/00 | Summer Dan was made vice-president of the tennis club, and when he and Doris went on holiday to Aberystwyth, Christine and Phil gave a party for the cricket club at Brookfield. |
| 1951/00/00 | The ironstone scheme was rejected after a public inquiry, and Fairbrother took Grace away from Ambridge saying they would never come back. |
| 1951/00/00 | The major event in Ambridge this year was the discovery of ironstone deposits on Fairbrother's land - three million tons of it spread over one hundred acres. Fairbrother wanted to develop the site, and called in a mineralogist, Keith Latimer, who began test drillings. |
| 1951/00/00 | To his further delight, Walter heard he had been left a partnership in a sheep farm and goldmine in Australia by his Uncle Nat. He later found that the sheep farm and goldmine were useless. |
| 1951/00/00 | Walter Gabriel was proud when he heard that his only son, Nelson, had been promoted to corporal in the RAF (where he was doing national service). |
| //1951/01/01// | //First epi. goes out 11.45am.// |
| 1951/02/16 | Peggy Archer gave birth to a son, Anthony William Daniel, and Peggy's mother moved to Ambridge bringing a great deal of furniture with her. Known ever afterwards as Mrs P, she was described as a sharp-featured, black-coated woman, who always moaned when she was feeling happy. |
| 1951/03/15 | Eddie Grundy born |
| //1951/04/01// | //First 'in character' photo// |
| //1951/04/02// | //Easter Monday Archers evening episode 6.45pm.// |
| 1951/09/14 | Rosie Mabbott born |
| //1951/11/00// | //First carol service recorded// |
| //1951/12/26// | //Brookfield Christmas party.// //'live' recording.// |
| 1952/00/00 | Christine became friendly with a Lady Hyleberrow, a strange woman who called Christine 'Felicity' (the name of her daughter who had disappeared). Lady Hyleberrow was shocked to find that Christine went around with boys, and proposed taking her as her companion on a trip to Ethiopia. But Dan and Doris opposed the idea strongly, and Dan offered Christine a job at Brookfield, looking after the poultry. |
| 1952/00/00 | Dan sold his six cows giving low-fat-content milk, and bought two high quality Shorthorns for one hundred guineas each. Amber gained second prize, best of all breeds, at the Borchester Show. |
| 1952/00/00 | Dick Raymond also got fed up, accepted a job as junior correspondent for South East Asia on a national newspaper and went off to Malaya. |
| 1952/00/00 | Doris became upset when she found a page of a letter in a library book which seemed to infer that Christine's boyfriend, reporter Dick Raymond, had deserted a wife and two children. Happily it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. |
| 1952/00/00 | Doris was astonished and flattered when Mrs Lawson-Hope and Mrs Fairbrother proposed to nominate her as president of Ambridge Women's Institute - but was reduced to tears when people started accusing her of trying to buy votes by giving away bottles of preserved fruit. |
| //1952/00/00// | //First mention of a domestic pet - Judy, probably Tom Forrest's gun dog.// |
| 1952/00/00 | Grace visited Phil in hospital, but their romance seemed to be making little progress. Phil told her he would like her as his future wife, but had to make £2,000 first. He was shattered when Grace said she had no intention of waiting five years. Phil sold his motor bike for £80 and started saving hard. |
| 1952/00/00 | Peggy and Jack decided to apply for the licence of The Bull, and this was given to them later in the year. By then, however, Peggy was in Felpersham Isolation Hospital with diphtheria. |
| 1952/00/00 | Peggy and Jack moved to Cornwall in the spring, and Dan bought their smallholding for £1,300. In the summer, however, they returned because Barney Lee had started to get too fond of Peggy. |
| 1952/00/00 | Phil again started going out with Grace, who had returned with her father from London. Jane Maxwell left, and Grace began looking after the poultry at Coombe Farm. |
| 1952/00/00 | Phil also had medical problems. Against all advice, he tried to plough the top field on Lakey Hill, and when the tractor stalled he hit his head on the exhaust and developed eye trouble. He had an operation, which was successful. |
| 1952/00/00 | Reggie Trentham, a keen rider at point-to-points and director of Grey Gables Country Club, accused Irish thriller-writer Mike Daly, MC, (who had bought Blossom Hill Cottage as a rural retreat) of really being Major John Smith of the Army Pay Corps, who was cashiered for embezzling funds. Daly dismissed the charge as non-sense, but Reggie Trentham turned up at Blossom Hill Cottage one day with a girl, Valerie Grayson, who had been Major John Smith's girl friend. Mike and Valerie then told the truth: Mike Daly, MC, had been in Dachau concentration camp, and the British authorities had arranged his escape by getting a pro-British German officer to certify him as being dead. Returning to England he had been cashiered from the Army Pay Corps as Major John Smith to arouse the interest of enemy agents, and Valerie Grayson, also a secret service agent, had been his fiancee for convenience. Reggie Trentham accepted the explanation, and soon after married Valerie Grayson. |
| //1952/01/05// | //7.30pm. First omnibus edition. Tom Forrest reports on village life// |
| 1952/07/00 | There was a warm, dry summer this year - twenty-seven days without rain in July in the Ambridge area. Hay was good at Brook field, and the winter wheat in Five Acre Field was looking fine when a jet plane crashed on it in August. |
| 1952/12/00 | At Christmas, Dan sold his turkeys to the Imperial Hotel in Borchester, and bought a horse called Midnight from Reggie Trentham. He gave it to Christine for her birthday. |
| 1952/12/00 | Walter Gabriel tried to make a television set for Mrs P but failed. |
| 1953/00/00 | A fire broke out in the Squire's wood and Tom had to evacuate his cottage and move his dogs to Brookfield. |
| 1953/00/00 | Although Jack was now landlord of The Bull, he insisted on doing farming work in the area. Peggy said he had a grasshopper mind. She was forced to take over as licensee of The Bull when the brewery complained about the way it was being run. |
| 1953/00/00 | Autumn, a mysterious figure appeared on the Ambridge- scene. A bearded young wanderer with a green caravan was discovered on Heydon Berrow, and was at first regarded with deep suspicion. Tom thought he was the poacher he fought with in the woods, and Christine suspected him of stealing one of her horses. But he was cleared when he went to a gypsy site and forced the gypsies who had taken Christine's horse to give it back. Jack, however, remained wary, and accused him of stealing the Christmas Club money from The Bull. |
| 1953/00/00 | Dan planned to grow Lucerne for the first time, and to try his hand at making silage. |
| 1953/00/00 | During the spring it looked as if Phil were going to lose Grace to the Squire's nephew, Clive Lawson-Hope, who had come to Ambridge to try and put his uncle's estate on a sound financial footing. Clive took Grace to the pictures, and kissed her in the car on the way home. He said it was his firm intention to marry her. Grace asked for time to think, and she was still thinking several weeks later when Clive told her he had changed his mind and did not want to get married. |
| //1953/00/00// | //First broadcast on 'General Overseas Service' with special 30 minute episodes so they could catch up!// |
| 1953/00/00 | In the late autumn, Squire Lawson-Hope was forced to sell Coombe Farm to Fairbrother, and Dan transferred his pullets, from free range to deep litter. |
| 1953/00/00 | Mrs P offered to lend Phil some money, so that he could speed up his new pig breeding scheme and afford to marry Grace straight away. |
| 1953/00/00 | On Coronation Eve, Phil and Grace stayed roasting potatoes on the bonfire on Lakey Hill until four o'clock in the morning. She told him she was going to go to Ireland for a year and train in horse management. He told her she was crazy, and they quarrelled bitterly at her farewell party at the Country Club. |
| 1953/00/00 | Peggy came out of hospital, and was distressed to hear rumours about Jack and the Ambridge schoolmistress, Elsie Catcher, who had been helping with the children while Peggy was ill. Jack dismissed the rumours as nonsense. |
| 1953/00/00 | The young wanderer remained a mystery until Ann Trentham, a pretty young cousin of Reggie Trentham, came to stay at the Country Club. She recognized him as John Tregorran, a lecturer at her university who had won £12,000 on the football pools. |
| 1953/00/00 | Tom Forrest was hurt in a fight with a poacher. |
| 1953/00/00 | Walter Gabriel decided to hold a coronation party at his farm, and had the building wired for Mrs P's television set, which she bought from a Borchester store. He confided to Jack that he was growing very fond of Mrs P - and his affection seemed to be returned when Mrs P gave up a ticket to watch the Coronation in London so that she could attend his party. |
| 1953/00/00 | Walter Gabriel was stunned when half his flock were killed and injured by dogs in the spring, and in the summer he had to be rushed to Southampton by police car when Nelson was taken seriously ill and admitted to an RAF hospital. Walter did not return for several weeks, and when he did he was very weak after giving blood to Nelson. Mrs P looked after his orphan lambs in the spring, and gave him nourishing food in the summer. |
| 1953/01/30 | Kathy Perks born |
| 1953/05/00 | Outbreak of swine-fever at the piggery. |
| 1953/12/00 | At Christmas, Walter Gabriel allowed John Tregorran to put his caravan in his rick yard, and a few days later a fire broke out and the caravan was extensively damaged. John Tregorran was convinced that the fire was started by gypsies. |
| 1954/00/00 | Autumn. John Tregorran found Christine alone at Brookfield and kissed her, and a few weeks later he suddenly proposed to Carol Grey. She did not reply. |
| 1954/00/00 | Dan and Doris received a second shock when the Squire called and told them he was going to sell the estate. He said it was a hard decision - the Lawson-Hopes and their tenant families had been bound together for generations. There was a Blower with the Law son-Hopes at Sedgemoor, an Archer at Waterloo, and a Gabriel was his father's batman at Vimy Ridge. Three dozen men of the village were in the yeomanry regiment which the Squire commanded in the last war. Dan was offered first option to buy Brookfield, and after several days of worry he managed to raise enough money. |
| 1954/00/00 | Dan decided to sell the smallholding, and it was bought by a smartly-dressed young lady from Surrey called Carol Grey, who said she had plans to start up a market garden. Carol had no sooner arrived in the village than she drove round a bend and knocked John Tregorran off his scooter. |
| 1954/00/00 | In Phil's life, everything was going well. He was busy building up a Hereford herd at Coombe Farm, and moved his pig breeding scheme there in the summer. Grace sent him a set of fishing rods for his birthday, and then a telegram to say she was coming home. They quarrelled at her welcome-home party (he thought she was flirting with Paul Johnson), then he proposed to her, and she said 'yes'. Dan and Doris breathed a sigh of relief. Doris said she had thought it would never happen. Fairbrother offered to rent them Coombe Farmhouse for a rent of one pound a week. |
| 1954/00/00 | In early summer, a young and rather dashing horse-owner called Paul Johnson saw Christine out riding, and approached Dan to ask his permission for Christine to ride for him at a two-day show at Belverston. After discussing the matter with Doris, Dan agreed to her going away for the two days. |
| 1954/00/00 | In the spring, Christine became romantically involved with the Squire's nephew, Clive Lawson-Hope. Phil objected to her friendship- partly because Clive had recently been chasing after Grace, and partly because of the unscrupulous way he was trying to hound Walter Gabriel out of his forty-acre farm. Squire Lawson-Hope objected because Christine was the daughter of one of his tenant farmers. |
| 1954/00/00 | Jack was away from Ambridge for four months, after Peggy insisted that he see a doctor because of his erratic behaviour and fits of ill temper. The doctor arranged for him to enter the county hospital for nervous and mental disorders as a voluntary patient. |
| 1954/00/00 | John Treggoran takes Carol Grey to the woods and she is bitten by an adder. |
| 1954/00/00 | Mike Daly, MC, the Irish thriller-writer and secret-service agent, bought seventy acres of woodland from the Squire, then asked Valerie Trentham, his former aide in the Secret Service if she would join him on 'special work'. Valerie refused. A few days later a woman called Baroness Czorva arrived and told Mike a certain party was expecting to see him. Mike left the village with her. |
| 1954/00/00 | Much of the estate - including Walter Gabriel's farm - was offered to Fairbrother. Walter was confident that he would not be evicted, and offered John Tregorran a job as his right- hand man, with a fair living wage and a Christian roof over his head. John, however, discovered that Walter was only interested in his pools fortune, and decided to leave Ambridge altogether. On the way out of the village he was attacked by gypsies, and decided to stay after all. |
| 1954/00/00 | Pullets transferred from free range to deep litter at Brookfield. |
| 1954/00/00 | There was a bitter winter and a cold spring, and heavy rain throughout the summer ruined the haymaking in Ambridge and delayed the corn harvest. Dan was relieved to find that yields were above average. |
| 1954/03/00 | In March, however, Clive proposed to Christine, having been left a farm in Kenya by his Uncle Percy. Christine turned him down, and he went off to Africa alone. |
| 1954/05/12 | Clarrie Grundy born |
| 1955/00/00 | After Grace's death, Paul Johnson and Chris drew closer together. He comforted her, and suggested joining her in a partnership at the stables. Doris moved into Coombe Farm with Phil for a short time. |
| 1955/00/00 | At Brookfield, Dan had exceptionally good yields of wheat and barley, but his sugar beet suffered from drought. |
| 1955/00/00 | At Phil and Grace's wedding - Easter Sunday - Jack was best man and Christine a bridesmaid. |
| 1955/00/00 | At the market garden, Carol found the work was getting on top of her, and Dr Cavendish came across her sobbing in the pump house. There was some slight relief when John Tregorran said he would not bother her again, but would divert his attention to a more responsive woman. |
| 1955/00/00 | Christine passed her scooter test, and one of the Squire's former tenants, Joe Blower, bought a motor car. He then took Mrs P out for a ride in it, and made Walter jealous |
| 1955/00/00 | Christine was becoming increasingly involved with Paul Johnson and his horse- owning set. In February she rode a fiery mare belonging to Reggie Trentham and broke her collar bone. |
| 1955/00/00 | Doris spent much of the summer laying a crazy-paving path round her garden. |
| 1955/00/00 | It was a hectic time at Brookfield. Phil and Grace were due to be married on Easter Monday, but Phil tried to change the date after Jack pointed out the tax advantages of marrying sooner. Grace met the suggestion with an icy refusal. |
| 1955/00/00 | John Tregorran quarrelled with Dr Cavendish, who had bought the Manor House from Squire Lawson-Hope and objected to John staging a 'Makemerry Fair' on his doorstep. John also quarrelled with Carol Grey, saying she was indiscreet to entertain Reggie Trentham until one o'clock in the morning. The next time John called, she refused to let him in. He told Tom that he was receiving so little co-operation for his 'Makemerry Fair' that he intended to hold it in Penny Hassett instead of Ambridge. |
| 1955/00/00 | Myxomatosis reached Ambridge, but did not stop the Squire holding a final shoot for his former tenants and his friends. |
| 1955/00/00 | Paul Johnson invited Christine to go on a mysterious outing with him and Reggie Trentham - it turned out to be a race meeting at Scowell Braddon where Paul's filly Christina was running. He had wanted Christine along for luck. Dan reprimanded her for going about with racy types. |
| 1955/00/00 | Phil was offered a directorship by Fairbrother, and arranged a dinner at Grey Gables with John Tregorran, Carol, and Reggie and Valerie Trentham as guests. During the evening the stables caught fire, and in trying to bring out Midnight, Grace was injured by a falling beam. She died in Phil's arms on the way to hospital. |
| 1955/00/00 | Squire reassured Tom about his future on the estate now Fairbrother was taking over, and gave him a one pound a week pension for the rest of his life |
| 1955/01/00 | In January, Dan sent half a ton of hay to distressed farmers in flood areas, and reluctantly decided to sell Blossom. Haymaking in June was still largely unmechanized at Brookfield, and involved Dan, Len, Simon, and Walter; with Jack, John Tregorran and PC Bryden helping. |
| 1955/02/20 | Mark Hebden born |
| 1955/04/03 | Caroline Pemberton born |
| //1955/06/00// | //Script meeting: Grace's death plotted for 22/09/1955// |
| 1955/12/31 | On New Year's Eve, Walter threw a boisterous party at The Bull.the running board of her car, hit his head on a tree branch, and was knocked out. |
| 1956/00/00 | A miserable Walter Gabriel finally decided to give up farming. He told Phil he would leave his farm next Lady Day. |
| 1956/00/00 | At Brookfield, Doris painted the kitchen scarlet and grey, and Dan thought about selling the farm and retiring. He asked Phil if his future plans included Brookfield, and Phil said 'no'. Jack said he was prepared to make a go of Brookfield for the sake of Anthony William Daniel. But Dan decided to cling on a bit longer. |
| 1956/00/00 | Christine went into partnership at the stables with Paul Johnson's sister, Sally. |
| 1956/00/00 | Dan's sheep were restocked with eighty Radnor-type ewes and two Downland rams |
| 1956/00/00 | Doughy Hood believed John Tregorran was a rogue, but refused to say why for several weeks. It then emerged that a man called John Tregorran had swindled his friend out of a lot of money. Investigation proved that the villain was a Ron Tregorran. A penitent Doughy Hood offered to do a stall of decorative beads at John Tregorran's Whit Monday Fair. |
| 1956/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel came home on leave and made unwelcome advances to Christine. She told him she was engaged but he persisted in being a nuisance. Paul heard about it and went out after Nelson's blood - Phil had to break up the fight. |
| 1956/00/00 | Soon, to Walter's disappointment, Nelson said he had been recalled from leave and was being posted to one of the Mediterranean stations. Walter said he was thinking of giving up his farm - particularly as Fairbrother had confiscated ten acres of it. Phil planted potatoes on the ten acres, to clean the land ready for blackcurrants the following year |
| 1956/00/00 | Walter was pleased when Doughy Hood the baker returned to Ambridge, but disturbed to hear that Doughy was thinking of asking Mrs P to be his housekeeper. |
| 1956/01/17 | At Brookfield. two pigs were reported sick by Simon, and the vet was called. He suspected foot-and-mouth disease, and PC Bryden was ordered to stand guard on the gate to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. |
| 1956/02/15 | Hazel Woolley born |
| 1956/02/21 | Foot and mouth outbreak was confirmed. All cloven-hoofed animals - cattle, sheep, and pigs - were slaughtered by humane killers. Len and Simon dug a pit to bury the carcasses. The cause of the disease was traced to some foreign liver which had accidentally been thrown into the swill bucket without being boiled. |
| 1956/06/00 | Paul proposed to Christine in June and she accepted, and surprised her family by arriving home wearing an engagement ring. |
| 1956/10/00 | Dan's bank manager advised him to get back into milk as soon as possible, and in October he bought seven cows and six new-calved heifers. |
| 1956/10/00 | Simon retired, and was replaced by Ned Larkin from Dorset. |
| 1956/12/00 | Phil was given a cine camera for Christmas by Fairbrother, who said he wanted Phil to start a cine club in Ambridge. He gave Phil the camera early, so he could film Christine's wedding on 15 December . |
| 1956/12/15 | Christine Archer married Paul Johnson. Christine wore a white lace dress with paper taffeta petticoats, and Doris wore an empire line dress of purple silk. Reggie Trentham was best man, and there was a reception at the Country Club. |
| 1957/00/00 | A couple of weeks after the fete Phil saw the girl he had filmed, demonstrating in a Borchester store. She told him her name was Jill Patterson, and she agreed to meet him at the Borchester Show. |
| 1957/00/00 | At Brookfield, Dan discovered blight in his potato clamp, and found he had lost twenty per cent of his crop, worth £160. He warned his bank manager that he was going through a bad time. |
| 1957/00/00 | Christine owns horse called Red Link, which really exists - Ridden by Alan Oliver at Badminton in April. Richmond Horse Show in June. Comes second at Dagenham, qualifies for Foxhunter competition. |
| 1957/00/00 | Doris had her problems, suffering from Laura's interference in the way the house and farm were being run. Dan was about to tell Laura to leave when she anticipated him by saying she had decided to visit her friend Nellie Macdonald in Stourhampton. On the way she was taken ill and rushed into Borchester General Hospital with a mild form of heart trouble. |
| 1957/00/00 | Ned Larkin's unmarried brother, Bob, followed him up from Dorset and annoyed Tom by making eyes at Pru Harris, the barmaid at The Bull. Not for long, however. Patrolling the woods one night with Phil, Tom struggled with a poacher and his gun went off. Bob Larkin was dead. Tom was arrested and charged with manslaughter. At Gloucester Assizes, several weeks later, he was found not guilty and made a triumphant return to Ambridge accompanied by the Borchester Silver Band. |
| 1957/00/00 | Peggy heard that Stourhampton Brewery were taking over The Bull from Borchester Brewery. |
| 1957/00/00 | Phil became fascinated by cine photography, and made a film for the village cine club, with John Tregorran writing the script. Casting caused much jealousy in the village. |
| 1957/00/00 | Phil started seeing Jill Patterson frequently. She told him she was an orphan. They met one day at New Street Station, in Birmingham, and Phil asked her to marry him. She said she needed time to think. A few weeks later they met for dinner at the Station Hotel, Borchester. Phil remembered it was the second anniversary of Grace's death. They collected flowers together from the garden of Coombe Farm and took them to the church. |
| 1957/00/00 | Tom confessed to Doris that he was thinking of asking Pru Harris to marry him. |
| 1957/00/00 | Walter began his carrier service in his minibus, and Mrs P bought him a spotlight for his birthday. His enthusiasm was dashed, however, when teddy boys stole his bus from outside the village hall. It was recovered with the seats slashed. Phil and John Tregorran had them repaired for him. |
| 1957/03/00 | In early March, Walter held a farm sale, and on Lady Day gave possession of his farm to Norman Wynford, who planned to keep a small dairy herd and fatten pigs for bacon. Walter bought a minibus and was granted a 'B' haulage and carrier's licence. |
| 1957/05/22 | Neil Carter born |
| 1957/05/29 | At Brookfield, Dan received a telegram from his sister-in-law Laura in New Zealand to say his brother Frank was seriously ill. |
| 1957/05/30 | Frank died. Another telegram arrived at Brookfield when Dan and Doris were at the Three Counties Show, to say that Laura was in England and would arrive at Hollerton Junction that night. Phil went to meet her. Laura said she planned to stay in England for a while. Doris said she must regard Brookfield as her home. |
| 1957/06/00 | June was dry and hot, with some of the highest temperatures for a hundred years. |
| 1957/07/00 | In July Phil filmed the church fete, which was opened by Humphrey Littleton. He also filmed a very attractive girl with blonde, urchin-cut hair, wearing a yellow dress. |
| 1957/11/16 | Jill finally agreed to marry Phil, and their wedding took place, quietly, at Crudley church on 16 November. The Fairbrothers gave them a second-hand car as a wedding present. |
| 1958/00/00 | At Brookfield, Dan lost most of his oats when fire broke out in his Dutch barn. A casual labourer was blamed. Dan was financially hard hit, but refused an interest-free loan of £1,500 from Laura, who offered him the money out of gratitude for his kindness, and because he had gone to the trouble of finding her a cottage to rent in the village. |
| 1958/00/00 | Carol Grey went on a sailing holiday with friends, and the village was alarmed to see a newspaper report that her boat had capsized off the coast of Denmark. But after several days she was reported to be safe and well. |
| 1958/00/00 | Doris was spending every afternoon with Lettie Lawson-Hope, discussing old times. When Lettie died, she left Doris Glebe Cottage, with four acres of land, for her lifetime. Dan traced Boxer to a farm at Haddenwood, and borrowed him to partner Blossom for pulling the haywagon that carried Lettie's coffin to the church. |
| 1958/00/00 | In the autumn there was a new apprentice at Brookfield, Jimmy Grange, who encountered a number of problems. First he borrowed Phil's cine camera and dropped it from his bedroom window, then he was almost accused of stealing the youth club funds, and finally a boy called Dusty Rhodes threw a brick through his guitar. |
| 1958/00/00 | It was a wet summer, with heavy rain and severe thunderstorms in July. While Dan was helping at the church fete (opened by Squire Lawson-Hope), lightning struck an oak tree at Brookfield and killed six lambs. |
| 1958/00/00 | John Tregorran took over running the village cine club from Phil, and also asked Doris if she would help to organize a folk music group in the village. Doris agreed, and suggested Jill as another possible organizer. |
| 1958/00/00 | Paul Johnson rode Monarch in the point-to-point at Heybury, but Doris refused to go and watch him. In the evening Dan discovered why: Doris had secretly been to the dentist and had all her teeth out. |
| 1958/00/00 | Pru Forrest was anything but well. After being X-rayed by a mobile chest unit she was sent to a sanatorium. The X-ray had showed a small patch on her lung, and she would be away from the village for two or three months. |
| 1958/00/00 | The big public controversy of the year was about a proposed arterial road - part of the Borchester bypass - which would cut through the Fairbrother Estate. Dan and John Tregorran organized a series of protest meetings, and the plan was finally abandoned. |
| 1958/00/00 | Tom spent most of the spring and summer wondering whether or not to ask Pru Harris to marry him. |
| 1958/00/00 | Walter Gabriel disappeared from Ambridge for a week, and on his return admitted that he had had to clear Nelson's debts to get him out of trouble. |
| 1958/00/00 | Walter puzzled Mrs P by giving her a silver locket and chain, 'in grateful thanks for all her help and encouragement'. |
| 1958/00/00 | Walter was in trouble on Whit Monday, when he blew a coaching horn at inappropriate moments during the Ambridge-Penny Hassett cricket match. |
| 1958/01/00 | In January, Lilian went skating on the village pond and fell through the ice. She was rescued by Jack and Ned Larkin. |
| 1958/08/08 | On 8 August, Jill gave birth to twins - and Dan was bewildered to find he had grandchildren called Kenton and Shula. |
| 1958/09/26 | Tom asked Pru to marry him in the end, she accepted, and they were married on 26 September. |
| 1958/12/00 | At the end of the year, Dan decided to improve and reorganize Brookfield. |
| 1958/12/00 | John Tregorran acted as Father Christmas at the Ambridge Christmas Fayre. |
| 1959/00/00 | Carol Grey was having problems with John Tregorran. She was late for a date one night, and found him half drunk in the Bear Hotel, Borchester. She took him home to Blossom Hill Cottage and was seen by Madame Garonne (Grenville's mysterious housekeeper) to leave at 1.30 am. |
| 1959/00/00 | Dr Maclaren sent Dan to hospital in Oxford with suspected pneumothorax, but it turned out to be a false alarm. |
| 1959/00/00 | In the later autumn Carol Grey showed Grenville a copy of the Borchester Echo with headlines about Madame Garonne being a diamond smuggler. |
| 1959/00/00 | In the summer Arthur Perkins came from London to work on a memorial window for Grace in the church, and Mrs P entertained him to several meals. Arthur soon proposed to Mrs P, who told him she could not consider remarriage at her age. A week or two later, however, she took him for a drive in her pony and trap and agreed to marry him. They left the village and set up home in London. |
| 1959/00/00 | In the summer Carol was asked by Grenville to step into the breach as hostess at a dinner party, after Madame Garonne had suddenly disappeared. She later dined alone with Grenville, and had to face the anger of a bitterly jealous John Tregorran. |
| 1959/00/00 | Jimmy Grange was approached by an agent who wanted to promote him in show business. Jimmy, however, refused to be promoted without the rest of his skiffle group. |
| 1959/00/00 | Recovering from his disappointment over Mrs P, Walter decided to fatten and sell six pigs, and persuaded Ned Larkin to go into partnership with him. |
| 1959/00/00 | Stourhampton Brewery decided to sell The Bull, and gave Peggy and Jack the chance to buy it for £5,300. They were on the point of turning the offer down when Laura offered them an interest-free loan of £4,000, enabling them to go ahead with the purchase. |
| 1959/00/00 | Walter Gabriel was discovered ill in bed and feeling very neglected. Mrs P looked after him while John Tregorran took over his bus service. Walter later repaid Mrs P's kindness by rotovating her garden the evening after she had planted her seeds. |
| 1959/00/00 | Walter was becoming increasingly fond of Mrs P. |
| 1959/01/00 | As the year began, the village buzzed with the news that Fairbrother was selling his estate to an old friend of the Lawson-Hopes, Charles Grenville, who had just returned to England from Africa. As Fairbrother's farm manager, Phil met Grenville and decided he would be a dominating individual to work with. |
| 1959/03/00 | In March, Walter Gabriel had a biscuit tin of money stolen from his cottage, but the money was recovered by Tom and PC Bryden, who lay in wait at Arkwright Hall and caught a gypsy called Gregory Selden. |
| 1959/06/00 | Dan and Doris went to see Jimmy Grange and his skiffle group at a concert in Borchester. Doris thought the music terrible, but said young people ought to be encouraged to do their best. |
| 1959/06/00 | In June, Pru finally returned to Ambridge from the sanatorium. |
| 1959/06/08 | Nigel Pargetter born |
| 1959/09/00 | In September, Dan was helping Ned to repair the roof of the implement shed when he fell and seriously injured himself on the binder. Phil and Tom freed him, and he was taken to hospital with a fractured leg. He returned home after several weeks, but refused to rest and had a bad fall in the dairy when his crutches slipped. Grenville told Phil to spend as much time as he needed running Brookfield while his father was ill. |
| 1959/09/18 | Jill gave birth to a son, David Thomas. |
| 1960/00/00 | At Brookfield, Dan was recuperating slowly from the injuries to his leg, and Jack gave a lot of help with the livestock. |
| 1960/00/00 | Dan and Doris went to Torquay, where Dan sat on the beach worrying about Brookfield. |
| 1960/00/00 | Dan discovered his poultry had fowl pest. They were all destroyed and he decided not to keep poultry again. |
| 1960/00/00 | Dan offered to buy Wynford farm and go into partnership with Jack but Peggy refused to contemplate being a farmer's wife again. |
| 1960/00/00 | Grenville gave Arkwright Hall to the village as a community centre, and Doris was appointed to the General Purposes Committee. |
| 1960/00/00 | Grenville took Carol Grey out to dinner, and she told him she was an orphan. |
| 1960/00/00 | In Ambridge, Walter made a pathetic attempt to buy his old farm now known as Wynyards back from Phil, but Phil turned him down. |
| 1960/00/00 | In June, Carol called on John Tregorran in his new antique shop in Borchester and saw a painting which shocked her terribly. She recognized the room in the picture, but could not say where it was. |
| 1960/00/00 | In the autumn Tom and Pru considered fostering a child, and visited a children's home where they saw a little boy called Johnny Martin, who started to visit them for the occasional weekend. |
| 1960/00/00 | In the summer, which was rainy, cool and stormy, Tom and Pru moved into their new cottage built by Grenville |
| 1960/00/00 | John Tregorran told Carol he had solved the mystery. Carol's mother and father (unmarried) were both artists, but parted when Carol was two. She was then adopted by her mother's cousin James and his wife, who were killed in the blitz. It was Carol's mother, Beatrice, who had painted the picture of the room. |
| 1960/00/00 | Paul Johnson caught chicken pox early in the year |
| 1960/00/00 | Paul Johnson lost four hounds when he hunted the Ambridge pack when Reggie Trentham, the Master of Hounds, was ill with a bad back. The hounds were discovered, dead, by Tom Forrest. They had canine virus hepatitis. |
| 1960/00/00 | Paul Johnson's mother, who lived in Bournemouth, withdrew all her capital from his business. Paul refused to let Chris sell any of her horses, and obtained extra finance from an investment trust called Octopus Ltd. When he signed the final papers he found that Octopus Ltd was run by Charles Grenville. |
| 1960/00/00 | Phil and Paul Johnson went to Paris, where Paul bumped into a girl called Marianne Peters . Phil was alarmed when he later saw Marianne Peters and Paul in Borchester, and Christine was suspicious when she found a letter addressed to Marianne in Paul's office. Paul explained that she was the daughter of an old school friend, and he was helping her to get a job. |
| 1960/00/00 | Phil bought Wynford's as an investment for the future and let the land to his father. He said he was getting restless working for Charles Grenville, who interfered with his work more than he ought to have done. |
| 1960/00/00 | Phil went to Holland on business with Grenville, and Carol Grey, who also had business in Holland, travelled with them. Soon after they arrived, Phil was taken into hospital with an infected foot, and Carol and Grenville continued without him. When they arrived back to pick him up they told him they were engaged to be married. |
| 1960/00/00 | Walter Gabriel bought Parson's field, next to Mrs Turvey's garden, for his pig venture with Ned Larkin. Mrs Turvey complained to the health department, and Walter was told he could not keep pigs unless the land were properly drained. |
| 1960/00/00 | Walter Gabriel tried to help his neighbour Mrs Turvey by felling a tree in her garden, but it landed on top of her garden shed and smashed it. |
| 1960/00/00 | Walter's bus service ran into difficulties. After a minor accident (in which Doris cut open her head), Grenville accused Walter of being incapable of driving. Soon afterwards the Education Authority cancelled Walter's school bus contract. |
| 1960/06/18 | Terry Barford born |
| 1961/00/00 | At Brookfield the combined dairy effort appeared to be working well, and Dan installed a bulk milk tank with a 250 gallon capacity. |
| 1961/00/00 | At Brookfield, Jimmy Grange (love-sick for Carol Grey, who had encouraged his guitar-playing) decided to leave the village. |
| 1961/00/00 | Dan took on a new farmworker, Nigel Burton, who immediately upset Doris by asking for a key to his bedroom door. |
| 1961/00/00 | Dan was setting up Ambridge Dairy Farmers Ltd. The dairy herds from Barratt's and Allard's farms moved to Brookfield in early April, and Dan's store cattle and followers went to Barratt's farm. |
| 1961/00/00 | Doris persuaded Carol to go to the WI and be nominated as a member of the committee. |
| 1961/00/00 | In court, Grenville said the vandalism might have been prompted by an article he had written for the Borchester Echo, which called for the return of corporal punishment in cases of juvenile delinquency. |
| 1961/00/00 | Jennifer came back to The Bull after a school holiday in Switzerland, and Peggy was startled to find a letter in her room from a man called Max presumably a ski instructor. The letter made it clear that sixteen-year-old Jennifer was pretending to be eighteen. |
| 1961/00/00 | Max arrived at The Bull, and turned out to be Max Bailey from Wolverhampton. Peggy liked him but Jack refused to let him stay the night. |
| 1961/00/00 | Paul reluctantly allowed Christine to sell some horses when his own business ran into new difficulties. After trouble over a tractor deal and a flaw in the accounts, he offered his resignation to Octopus Ltd. Grenville told him to soldier on. |
| 1961/00/00 | Phil bought six Jersey cows to start a Channel Island herd on the Grenville Estate. |
| 1961/00/00 | Phil returned to his passion for cine photography. He and Jill made a 16mm colour film with sound commentary for the Ambridge Cine Club. |
| 1961/00/00 | Reggie and Valerie Trentham's little girl Hazel contracted a mild form of polio, which prompted a widespread immunization programme in the area. |
| 1961/00/00 | Tom and Pru decided to foster two boys who were close friends at the children's home, Peter Stevens and Johnny Martin. |
| 1961/00/00 | Walter Gabriel had a small win on the football pools. Nelson Gabriel reappeared and persuaded his father to invest three thousand pounds in a light engineering business. |
| 1961/00/00 | Walter bought an eight-speed bicycle in Hollerton for £30. |
| 1961/00/00 | Walter decided to go into the junk business on the space next door to the pet shop. |
| 1961/00/00 | Wedding of Carol to Charles Grenville. |
| 1961/03/00 | In March, Ambridge was hit by vandalism. Three teenagers on motorbikes started a fire in a hay-filled barn on the Grenville Estate. Walter Gabriel and Sally Johnson caught them in the act and in a scuffle Walter was kicked about the head and left unconscious . Grenville then arrived and broke one of the vandal's arms with a judo blow. |
| 1961/11/00 | In November, Jennifer went to Wolverhampton to stay with Max and his family |
| 1961/12/00 | In December Mrs P was suddenly taken ill in London, and Peggv went to look after her. |
| 1962/00/00 | At Hollowtree Phil maintained his special interest - pigs. He bought two sows, four gilts and a boar from Grenville's herd and started to build up a pig unit. |
| 1962/00/00 | By arrangement with the police, John Tregorran dropped £200 at a predetermined spot, and PC Bryden caught the crooks - estate worker Harry White and his accomplice Chuck Ballard. |
| 1962/00/00 | Carol Grenville was scarcely back from her honeymoon before a bundle of love- letters, written to her by John Tregorran, was found at the market garden. She told John she never meant to abandon the letters, and would keep them for their sentimental value. |
| 1962/00/00 | Cellar Club' opened for teenagers at 'The Bull' |
| 1962/00/00 | Grenville took on a new manager, a good-looking Scotsman called Andrew Sinclair. |
| 1962/00/00 | In the autumn Reggie and Valerie Trentham left the village and sold Grey Gables Country Club to Birmingham businessman Jack Woolley. Woolley described himself as a self- made man and said he was going to turn Grey Gables into an exclusive holiday centre for tired business executives . |
| 1962/00/00 | Jack Woolley he broke his wrist and sprained his ankle in a car accident , but a week later he was asking Grenville to sell him twenty acres at the bottom of Lakey Hill for a golf course. |
| 1962/00/00 | Jack complained bitterly because he had not been given the chance to take Allard's over, and Laura supported him. She asked Dan if she could buy an option on Brookfield for Anthony William Daniel when he grew up. Dan refused, and told her not to stir up trouble. |
| 1962/00/00 | Laura took Peggy a seed pearl necklace for her birthday, then broke down and said she was frightened by a prowler outside her cottage. Peggy suggested that she ought to take a lodger. |
| 1962/00/00 | Lilian spent the summer doing odd jobs trying to make five shillings a week to buy hay for her pony, Pensioner, during the winter. |
| 1962/00/00 | Paul Johnson took lessons as a helicopter pilot, then got a job with a company in East Anglia. He and Christine moved to Newmarket. But a few weeks later, Christine had a bad riding accident and Doris had to go and look after her. |
| 1962/00/00 | Phil resigned from the Grenville Estate and joined Ambridge Dairy Farmers Ltd. He and Jill moved into Allard's Farm - which they renamed Hollow-tree Farm - and Grenville paid for the redesigning of the kitchen as a parting present to Phil. |
| 1962/00/00 | Sally Johnson married Reggie Trentham's old racing chum Toby Stobeman, who took over a new betting shop in Hollerton. |
| 1962/00/00 | The Grenvilles' house was burgled and the letters stolen. Carol and John received threatening phone calls demanding £200 for the letters. Carol told Charles Grenville about them, and he was very understanding. |
| 1962/02/00 | Jess Allard died and his son Joe decided to sell the farm. After a long discussion, Fred Barratt and Dan approached Phil and asked if he would be interested in taking it on. |
| 1962/06/00 | Jennifer entered a dairy queen contest at the Borchester Young Farmers' Club, and told Peggy and Jack that she was going abroad on holiday with Max. They decided there was nothing they could do to stop her. |
| 1962/06/04 | Karen Barford born |
| 1962/08/00 | Dan gave Nigel Burton the chance to continue to live-in at Brookfield, or have £4 a week extra and find his own accommodation. Nigel decided to stay on - partly because of Doris's cooking. |
| 1962/09/00 | Phil, Dan and Fred Barratt decided to amalgamate the three farms into Ambridge Farmers Ltd |
| 1962/12/13 | Carol Grenville gave birth to a boy. He was named Richard Charles. |
| 1963/00/00 | After a cool, wet summer the harvest was better than expected, with crops above the ten-year average. |
| 1963/00/00 | Ambridge also won the Best Kept Village competition, and Jack decided that Ambridge now had more tourist potential. He and Peggy started planning to build a new dining- room at The Bull, overlooking the bowling green. |
| 1963/00/00 | At Grey Gables a young Brummie called Sid Perks turned up and warned Jack Woolley that his barman was on the fiddle. Woolley saw in Sid a younger version of himself, and sensed that he could make a success of life if he were given the right opportunities. He gave Sid a job as his chauffeur and right-hand man. |
| 1963/00/00 | At Hollowtree Farm, Phil and Jill argued about the schooling of the twins. He wanted them to be privately educated, using money left to him by Grace, but Jill thought they should go through the state system. |
| 1963/00/00 | Christine and Paul returned to the village. Phil agreed to let them live in the old Wynford's farmhouse if they would renovate it themselves. |
| 1963/00/00 | Dan and Doris went on holiday to Guernsey |
| 1963/00/00 | Dan had a difficult lambing, after many ewes had been lost in January, which was the coldest month of the century |
| 1963/00/00 | Doris bought an old picture from Walter Gabriel's new junk stall in Hollerton. |
| 1963/00/00 | In Ambridge, as in the rest of England, there was an exceptionally severe winter. Snow which fell on Lakey Hill in December was still there in mid-March. |
| 1963/00/00 | In the spring Ambridge Farmers Ltd signed a sugar beet contract with the Kidderminster factory, and spent £800 on a precision drill and down-the-row thinner. |
| 1963/00/00 | Jack Woolley said he was enjoying life away from the big city, but could not entirely subdue his business instincts. He bought the shop next to John Tregorran's in Borchester, and opened it as the New Curiosity Shop. |
| 1963/00/00 | Janet Sheldon and John Tregorran were married, and had their wedding reception at The Bull. |
| 1963/00/00 | Jennifer returned home from college, and brought Max with her for the opening of the Cellar Club. Jack agreed to let him stay over-night at The Bull. |
| 1963/00/00 | Jennifer started a teaching course at the West Midland Training College in Walsall. |
| 1963/00/00 | John Tregorran fell in love with pretty, blue-eyed district nurse Janet Sheldon and asked her to marry him. She agreed, and they fixed a date in June. |
| 1963/00/00 | Nelson wanted Walter to go and live with him in Borchester. He sent his father £10 and told him he now had a girl-friend whose parents were wealthy and influential in the engineering world. He was surprised and displeased when Walter refused to leave Honey-suckle Cottage. |
| 1963/00/00 | Nelson was furious when he heard that Walter was working as Father Christmas in a Borchester store. |
| 1963/00/00 | Phil sold Wynford's to Grenville, after he agreed that Christine and Paul could continue living in the farmhouse. |
| 1963/00/00 | Walter bought himself a steam engine. He brought it to Ambridge and called it 'Gabrielle' but soon decided to re-christen it 'Sarah' after an old girl-friend. |
| 1963/10/10 | Susan Carter born |
| 1963/10/31 | On 31 October, John Tregorran was with Carol when she received a phone call to say that Janet had been killed in a car crash, and Charles was badly injured. He had been driving Janet home to Blossom Hill Cottage. Surgeons at Borchester General Hospital operated on Charles, and amputated one of his legs. |
| 1963/12/00 | At Christmas Tom arranged a concert to raise funds for the old folk |
| 1964/00/00 | Agatha Turvey forced Walter Gabriel to leave the Hollerton Pet Shop as he was not pulling his weight in the partnership and he started breeding maggots in a shed near her garden. She complained to the Parish Council, and John Tregorran forced Walter to abandon his scheme . |
| 1964/00/00 | At Grey Gables, Jack Woolley decided to go on a six-month cruise, and had the brilliant idea of asking Valerie Trentham to run his guest house for him. She agreed, and it was decided she would try to build up the stables again with the help of Lilian Archer. |
| 1964/00/00 | At Hollerton Fair, young Sid Perks had trouble with some lay-about acquaintances from his past who stole his motorbike and embarrassed him in front of his new girl friend, twenty- one-year-old Polly Mead, the barmaid from The Bull. The motorbike was later found abandoned halfway to Birmingham. |
| 1964/00/00 | At Hollowtree Farm, Jill was upset when Elsie Catcher, the village schoolmistress, told her that Shula was a backward child. |
| 1964/00/00 | August was warm and dry, and the harvest was excellent. After much persuasion from Fred Barratt, Dan and Doris went on holiday to Malaga. |
| 1964/00/00 | Christine worked in the farm office at Brookfield for a few weeks but did not enjoy it very much. |
| 1964/00/00 | Dan bought some sheep-hand1ing equipment he saw at the Royal Show |
| 1964/00/00 | In the spring, Jack bought Jennifer a moped so she could return home from college more often. |
| 1964/00/00 | Jack and Peggy were worrying about the cost of the new dining-room at The Bull, but their problem was solved when Laura gave them a present of £25,000. (She later increased the amount to £30,000.) They decided to build a self-contained flat over their dining-room extension, and asked Laura if she would like to live in it. She said she would be delighted. |
| 1964/00/00 | PC Albert Bates replaced Geoffrey Bryden as the Ambridge constable. |
| 1964/00/00 | Paul Johnson desperately tried to raise the finance to buy the agricultural machinery firm he was running. Jack refused to find the money for him. |
| 1964/00/00 | Paul Johnson gave up being a helicopter pilot and Grenville offered him a job running a small agricultural machinery firm owned by Octopus Ltd. |
| 1964/00/00 | The village was astounded when Charles Grenville went to America, alone, after telling Carol he was disposing of his majority interest in Octopus Ltd. |
| 1964/00/00 | Twenty-three-year-old Gregory Salt from a farming family in Heydon started work at Hollowtree Farm |
| 1964/00/00 | Valerie Trentham returned unexpectedly with Hazel, and said that Reggie had died in the Bahamas. She and Hazel stayed at The Bull. |
| 1964/00/00 | Walter sold his granny's chamber pot to John Tregorran for £15 and bought a stuffed gorilla from a man in Felpersham. He called it George, and said he needed it as a sign-post for a new junk shop he was opening in Ambridge. |
| 1964/00/00 | Walter went into partnership with Jack to buy a balloon from a Mr Snout of Hollerton, and called it Pegasus. |
| 1964/04/00 | Grenville had the first fitting of his artificial leg, but did not return to Ambridge until the summer. |
| 1964/12/00 | At Christmas, Doris was given a Jack Russell terrier by Dan, and called it Trigger. |
| 1964/12/00 | Walter played Long John Silver in the vicar's production of Treasure Island. He had a real parrot. |
| 1964/12/01 | Keith Horrobin born |
| 1965/00/00 | A few days after returning to Ambridge from New York Carol heard that Charles had collapsed and died, struck down by a bug he picked up in the East, which had lain dormant for years. |
| 1965/00/00 | At Brookfield, Doris decided to lean to drive a motor car, and insisted that Dan and Phil try to teach her. Eventually she gave the idea up, and bought a pony and trap. |
| 1965/00/00 | Christine and Paul adopted a little boy called Peter, who was born on 5 September. |
| 1965/00/00 | Doris organized a party of WI members to go on a four-day trip to Holland. |
| 1965/00/00 | Fred Barratt sold his land to Laura, who rented one hundred acres back to Phil and Dan. |
| 1965/00/00 | Fred Barratt told Dan he had had enough of farming and wanted to retire next Lady Day. Phil and Dan therefore agreed to pay off his interest in Ambridge Farmers Ltd by instalments |
| 1965/00/00 | In January, Charles Grenville phoned Carol and said he wanted to settle permanently in America. Carol flew to see him in New York, then returned to Ambridge to sell up the estate . |
| 1965/00/00 | In his will Charles left the house and three companies to Carol. |
| 1965/00/00 | In the summer Dan, Doris and the Barratts went on holiday to Ireland. While they were there, Brookfield was burgled and Doris's collection of copperware was stolen. |
| 1965/00/00 | It was a wet, miserable year on the land. The hay crop at Brook-field was almost a complete failure, and at corn harvest, barley was poor in quality and wheat yields were low. |
| 1965/00/00 | Jack Woolley was delighted to discover that Grey Gables had been owned by a Sir John Woolhay three hundred years ago, and that a branch of the Woolhays later became known as Woolley. |
| 1965/00/00 | Jennifer was in disgrace at home, having been thrown out of her flat in Walsall after a rowdy party. She was back in favour, however, when she had a short story published in a magazine. |
| 1965/00/00 | John Tregorran returned home after a long holiday in Spain (where he spent some time in hospital after trouble with his vocal chords) and took a leading part in organizing the Ambridge summer festival. It included a pageant depicting the Garden of Eden. Walter's elephant Rosie, and Tiny Tim, were a huge success. |
| 1965/00/00 | Laura was having a busy year. She moved into the flat at The Bull, and was saved from a nasty car accident by a handsome, dark-haired young man called Roger Patillo. She gave him a job as her chauffeur, and he soon became friendly with Lilian. |
| 1965/00/00 | Sid became jealous when Polly got a job at the Regency Hotel in Borchester, so she broke their engagement off. |
| 1965/00/00 | The barmaid at The Bull, Polly Mead, turned down a proposal of marriage from Gregory Salt, and accepted one from Sid Perks. |
| 1965/00/00 | The estate was sold, on Richard's behalf, and bought by Jack Woolley and Ralph Bellamy (the son of Admiral Bellamy, who had died recently after running a large estate next to Ambridge). |
| 1965/00/00 | Walter Gabriel gave his parrot from Treasure Island to a certain Mrs Twelvetrees of Felpersham, and then bought an elephant. She was called Rosie, and before long had a baby called Tiny Tim. |
| 1965/00/00 | Walter learned that Nelson had forged somebody's signature on a cheque. The matter was hushed up with difficulty. |
| 1965/00/00 | When Jennifer came home she suggested that Roger Patillo should start a folk- singing group in Ambridge. |
| 1965/00/00 | Woolley bought a large topaz brooch for Valerie Trentham, and persuaded her to become engaged to him. |
| 1965/05/31 | On 31 May Doris represented Ambridge WI at a Buckingham Palace garden party. |
| 1965/08/01 | Stuart/Stewart Horrobin born |
| 1965/09/05 | Peter Johnson born |
| 1965/11/00 | Roger Patillo confessed to Laura that far from being a suspicious foreigner (as Jack thought), his real name was Roger Travers-Macy, and his family had money and breeding. They were also cold and indifferent, which was why he had chosen an assumed name. Laura was taken aback, but grateful when he gave her a good tip for the stock exchange. |
| 1966/00/00 | At Brookfield, some hay was lost because of thunderstorms, and Phil agreed to increase the sheep to 150. They decided to make a sheep wintering yard with straw bales that year. |
| 1966/00/00 | Both Walter and Nelson disappeared. Zebedee Tring claimed he saw them heading for Southampton. |
| 1966/00/00 | Farm worker Paddy Redmond (a piano-playing Ulsterman who had failed to qualify as a vet), started going out with Nora McAuley when he was on holiday in Belfast. He brought her back to Ambridge and she got a job as barmaid at The Bull. |
| 1966/00/00 | It was a difficult autumn for Peggy. Jack gave her a wrist watch after a spectacular win at Nelson's casino, but later she saw from his cheque book that he had paid £450 in gambling debts in one week alone. |
| 1966/00/00 | Jennifer told Lilian that she was expecting a baby. Lilian was shocked, but promised to stand by her sister. |
| 1966/00/00 | Jill told Phil she was expecting a baby |
| 1966/00/00 | John Tregorran again proposed to Carol (the first time was in 1954) and this time she said 'yes'. |
| 1966/00/00 | Laura engaged a Miss Fairlie as her chauffeur/housekeeper. |
| 1966/00/00 | More fires broke out in the Ambridge area, and the village was in a high state of nervousness throughout the spring. |
| 1966/00/00 | Nelson went into partnership with Reggie Trentham's old racing chum, Toby Stobeman. They opened a casino and betting shop in Borchester, much to the delight of Jack, who discovered a taste for gambling. |
| 1966/00/00 | Peggy discovered that Jennifer was secretly going out with Nelson Gabriel. When confronted, Jennifer said she would go out with whom she pleased, but Nelson himself suddenly became elusive. |
| 1966/00/00 | Roger Travers-Macy (who was becoming increasingly friendly with Lilian) went to work at a Borchester bookshop |
| 1966/00/00 | Sid comforted Polly, and she agreed to become engaged again. The wedding was fixed for September. |
| 1966/00/00 | The police finally caught the arsonist setting fire to The Bull: he was Frank Mead, Polly's father. He was admitted to the county hospital for nervous and mental disorders. |
| 1966/00/00 | The year began badly at Brookfield, when Dan slipped a disc while trying to move a heavy tractor wheel. A few weeks later a fire broke out and destroyed a tractor and damaged the house. The police were called in and found evidence of arson. |
| 1966/00/00 | Walter became worried when Jennifer questioned him about his son's whereabouts. |
| 1966/00/00 | Walter found forty-two gold sovereigns in an old cash box hidden up the chimney of his cottage |
| 1966/00/00 | When John Tregorran opened a Borchester bookshop of his own, he took on Roger Travers-Macy as his assistant manager. |
| 1966/00/00 | Woolley and Valerie Trentham were married, and Carol and John gave them a pair of bedside reading lamps. |
| 1966/00/00 | Woolley gave Sid Perks the job of managing Arkwright Hall Recreation Centre (where he planned to build a swimming pool that could be converted into a dance hall in winter). |
| 1966/00/00 | Woolley organized a grand summer fete at the Hall which turned out to be a disaster. Many villagers stayed away, and accused Woolley of pretending to be the squire of Ambridge. |
| 1966/00/00 | Woolley took on a new chauffeur called Higgs. |
| 1966/09/27 | On 27 September Sid and Polly were married. Jennifer and Lilian were bridesmaids, and wore pale blue brocade dresses. Polly was given away by Jack. The honeymoon was spent in Cornwall, and afterwards Sid and Polly returned to the flat at Arkwright Hall. |
| 1966/09/27 | Polly Perks married |
| 1967/00/00 | At Brookfield, Paddy Redmond the dairyman complained because Phil would not introduce a milk bonus scheme, and decided to work for himself. He quarrelled with Nora at The Bull, left Ambridge Farmers Ltd and headed south. |
| 1967/00/00 | Dan returned home to Brookfield one night and found the house ransacked. Doris was lying at the foot of the stairs, unconscious, and was taken to hospital. She had been knocked down by an intruder making his escape. |
| 1967/00/00 | In the autumn, Woolley found out that Valerie had been dining alone with Roger Travers-Macy on several occasions. He told Carol Tregorran that he and Valerie were drifting apart. |
| 1967/00/00 | In the wettest May for two hundred years, Sid Perks tried his hand at farming, taking a job at Hollowtree Farm. |
| 1967/00/00 | Jack Woolley offered to help with money for the defence when Nelson was tracked down, and other friends clubbed together to buy Walter a tropical fish tank, with fish, to help cheer him up. |
| 1967/00/00 | John Treggoran sold the bookshop in Borchester, and they bought Manor Court for over £20,000. |
| 1967/00/00 | John soon joined Laura in forming the Ambridge Protection Society, aimed not at Nelson Gabriel, but at a vast village development scheme planned by Bellamy and Woolley. |
| 1967/00/00 | Leaving hospital, Jennifer went to stay with Laura for a while, who said she knew the father of the baby was Paddy Redmond. Jennifer did not deny it. |
| 1967/00/00 | Phil won a newspaper competition with an essay about 'Farming in the Future' - the prize was a world tour of farms in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Jill told him he must seize the opportunity and that she would look after Hollowtree while he was away. |
| 1967/00/00 | Sid soon fell out with Phil and left to work for a Mr Brown at Paunton Farm (outside Ambridge). Mr Brown then revealed that his pig-farm activities were just a cover - he and his brother were professional gamblers hiding from a gang of thugs demanding protection money. |
| 1967/00/00 | Sid went to work for Paul Johnson, who was now running the garage. |
| 1967/00/00 | The police raided Paunton's Farm after a mail-van robbery, and said fingerprints found on an empty scotch bottle were identical with prints taken in Nelson's luxurious Borchester flat. Was he still alive? Walter said 'his Nelson' would never be so heartless as to fake his death and break his father's heart. |
| 1967/00/00 | Walter Gabriel - back from a fabulous cruise with Nelson - became convinced that Nelson was the father of Jennifer's baby. |
| 1967/00/00 | Walter was shaken when Nancy Tarrant from Penny Hassett visited him and said Nelson had made her pregnant. He told her to move out of the district and promised to send her money. |
| 1967/00/00 | When Jennifer told her parents she was pregnant, Jack tried to throw her out of The Bull, but Peggy would not let him. The pregnancy became the talking point of Ambridge, particularly as Jennifer refused to name the father. |
| 1967/00/00 | Woolley - prompted by Valerie - cut down the famous yew trees in front of Grey Gables, and the Protection Society made its first protest. |
| 1967/00/00 | Woolley, however, had other problems to worry about. The Arkwright Hall Recreation Centre was proving a failure. He told Sid and Polly it would have to close, and they would be out of work. |
| 1967/01/00 | In January, Jennifer told the vicar she was pregnant, and asked him to speak to her parents. He told her to tell them herself. |
| 1967/02/01 | John Tregorran and Carol were quietly married in Ambridge parish church. |
| 1967/04/21 | Elizabeth Pargetter born |
| 1967/04/21 | Jill gave birth to a daughter, who was immediately rushed to hospital with a heart condition. A surgical examination showed a narrowed valve into a main artery, and a hole between two large pumping chambers. The baby, named Elizabeth, underwent an operation to widen the pulmonary valve. |
| 1967/05/00 | Nelson was reported dead. The police said he was travelling in a light 'plane which crashed into the sea. Walter's confusion was made worse by inquiries from the French police about his son's business deals. |
| 1967/06/22 | Adam Macy born |
| 1967/06/22 | Jennifer gave birth to a baby boy, and decided to call him Adam. She also heard that a novel she had written had been accepted for publication. |
| 1968/00/00 | At The Bull, Peggy was relieved when Jack developed a craze to own a boat, and bought one with Walter. They kept it on the River Severn, and Peggy hoped it would keep Jack's mind off gambling and drinking. |
| 1968/00/00 | At the Bull, Jack gave Peggy his winnings from a session at the Borchester Casino £245. She later found him unconscious in bed, nursing an empty whisky bottle. |
| 1968/00/00 | Borchester magistrates heard evidence that Nelson had visited Paunton's Farm the night before the mail-van robbery, and had been referred to as 'boss' by Charles Brown. He was committed for trial at the Assizes, and moved to Gloucester gaol. Walter visited him in prison, and Nelson said he had been framed. Walter was convinced of his son's innocence. |
| 1968/00/00 | Confident that the Woolley/Bellamy Ambridge development scheme would go through, Paul Johnson planned to expand the garage by adding a coffee bar. Sid, working as a forecourt attendant, shared his enthusiasm. |
| 1968/00/00 | Dan was presented with an illuminated address by the NFU to mark forty years faithful and active service to agriculture |
| 1968/00/00 | David Latimer, the new vicar, moved into the parish. Tom liked him, but was made uneasy by his free and easy ways, and refused to call him by his Christian name. |
| 1968/00/00 | Doris soon returned home from hospital, and claimed damages from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. The Brookfield attackers had knocked her out and she had broken her wrist. |
| 1968/00/00 | Doris was pleased to receive £250 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. |
| 1968/00/00 | Gregory Salt started work again at Brookfield, and became engaged to Nora McAuley. |
| 1968/00/00 | Hugo Barnaby, a cousin of John Tregorran, arrived from America and helped John with one or two deals in the antiques world. |
| 1968/00/00 | In the autumn Jennifer got a teaching job and moved to Brookfield for a few weeks so that Doris could look after Adam during the day. |
| 1968/00/00 | It was also a wet summer, the wettest since 1931. At the beginning of July multi- coloured dust, believed to be of North African origin, was brought down in Ambridge (and the rest of England) by heavy rain. Dan's barley was damaged by thunderstorms, and the quality of grain proved to be poor. |
| 1968/00/00 | Jennifer married Roger Travers-Macy |
| 1968/00/00 | Lester Nicholson was invalided out of the Canadian Air Force with ear trouble. |
| 1968/00/00 | Lilian met a Canadian Air Force pilot, Lester Nicholson, who was in England on an exchange course, and quickly fell in love with him. She told Jennifer that her affair with Roger Travers-Macy was over. Jennifer knew this, however, because Roger was already asking her out. |
| 1968/00/00 | Nelson also had something to celebrate. He was found not guilty, and freed without a stain on his character. He took Walter off on another cruise. |
| 1968/00/00 | Nora McAuley married Gregory Salt. |
| 1968/00/00 | Paul Johnson was warned that his garage business was going bankrupt through bad debts. |
| 1968/00/00 | Phil leaves the country on the first leg of his round-the-world farming tour, and Nelson returned to England having been tracked down by Interpol. |
| 1968/00/00 | Phil returned from his world tour, and told Jill he thought Ambridge Farmers ought to be more progressive, and Dan ought to think of retiring. |
| 1968/00/00 | Polly Perks won £1,000 on a premium bond, and used it as a deposit to buy the village shop. It was found that Sid could not be the sub-postmaster because of his past criminal record. |
| 1968/00/00 | Roger Travers-Macy proposed to Jennifer |
| 1968/00/00 | Valerie walked out on Jack Woolley. |
| 1968/03/00 | The development scheme was defeated, and Laura held a celebration party. |
| 1968/06/16 | Ruth Archer born |
| 1968/09/00 | More heavy rain and Dan found the cows loose at Brookfield, with one sinking into the slurry pit. He jumped down to save it and another cow fell on top of him, badly bruising his shoulder. The accident was blamed on Greg Salt, who had quarrelled with Nora and left a gate open. |
| 1968/09/27 | Roger Travers-Macy married |
| 1969/00/00 | After a family meeting it was decided that Dan and Doris would move to Glebe Cottage, and Phil and Jill - and the children - would move into Brookfield. |
| 1969/00/00 | Anthony William Daniel known as Tony - finished his farm institute course and returned to Ambridge to work for Bellamy. |
| 1969/00/00 | At The Bull, Peggy was having a bad time with Jack, who was drinking harder than ever. She discovered that he had called in a firm of valuers to look at The Bull. |
| 1969/00/00 | Carol Tregorran gave birth to a baby girl, to be called Anna Louise. |
| 1969/00/00 | Dan finally went to see his accountant and solicitor to discuss his retirement, and announced that he had made up his mind to go into semi-retirement. |
| 1969/00/00 | Dan struggled to get his barley drilled, even though the ground was in bad condition. He finally succumbed to a severe chest infection, and was taken to hospital. Phil and Doris both urged him to retire, but Dan refused. He was allowed home, but was ordered to report to hospital twice a week for treatment. |
| 1969/00/00 | Dan was beginning to find it more difficult to cope with full-time work on the farm. It was a very wet spring made particularly serious because heavy rains the previous autumn had delayed the drilling of winter wheat. |
| 1969/00/00 | In early summer, Polly and Walter were attacked in the post office by a thug who tried to snatch money and postal orders. Polly grappled with him, and as a result had a miscarriage. |
| 1969/00/00 | Jack began to take more interest in the Bull and suggested opening a 'Playbar' with fruit machines and expresso coffee. Peggy was dubious, but agreed. The 'Playbar' was opened, and heartily disliked by most villagers. |
| 1969/00/00 | Jill decided to stand for the Rural District Council, and campaigned against the threatened closure of Ambridge village school. Much to her surprise she was elected, and became Councillor Archer. |
| 1969/00/00 | On her birthday, Doris was given a wrist watch by Dan, and twelve pullets by Walter. She lost eleven of them when a fox invaded their pen, and kept the other as a pet. |
| 1969/00/00 | Paul Johnson set up a small firm to develop his own patented automobile equipment, and persuaded a large motor company to provide extra finance for his research. |
| 1969/00/00 | Shooting syndicate: Dan, Phil, Jack Woolley, Brigadier Winstanley. |
| 1969/00/00 | Tony bought himself a scooter, and started going out with the vicar's daughter, Tessa Latimer. |
| 1969/00/00 | Tony said he wanted to emigrate. |
| 1969/00/00 | Walter got permission to open a short-stay caravan site on his land, and called it The Old Mill Piece. |
| 1969/00/00 | When Dan was fit enough to travel, Bellamy offered him the use of his villa at Torquay for his convalescence. Dan and Doris accepted and Jennifer and Roger moved into Brookfield while they were away. |
| 1969/02/00 | In February, Paul was forced to sell his garage business to Bellamy. Sid continued to work as the forecourt attendant, and refused to help Polly in the shop. He changed his mind, however, when she told him she was pregnant. |
| 1969/05/26 | Lilian married Lester Nicholson - known as 'Nick' |
| 1969/12/00 | A group of youths ran wild in the Playbar, and Peggy was warned about disturbing the peace by Ambridge's new policeman PC Drury. |
| 1970/00/00 | After a serious fire at Manor Court, Carol and John Tregorran took shelter with Jack Woolley for several weeks. |
| 1970/00/00 | At Brookfield Phil and Jill got a French au pair girl called Michele Gravencin. |
| 1970/00/00 | At Brookfield, some hay was spoilt by heavy rain in late June, but after five years of excessive rain, 1970 was a comparatively good year. The corn harvest was reasonable and a mild autumn allowed ploughing to get well ahead. |
| 1970/00/00 | At The Bull, Peggy wanted to close the Playbar, which was attracting a rowdy element and driving away regular customers. Jack, however, insisted that it should stay open. |
| 1970/00/00 | Bellamy asked Lilian to act as hostess at a business dinner party. He told his business friends that as a result of computer techniques he could increase his profits fourfold. |
| 1970/00/00 | Dan and Doris moved into Glebe Cottage, and Lilian and Nick flew to Canada, where Nick could receive specialist treatment for his eyes. |
| 1970/00/00 | Dan began to regret his semi-retirement. |
| 1970/00/00 | Doris developed high blood pressure and was sent to Borchester General Hospital for tests and observation. |
| 1970/00/00 | In the summer Sid re-formed the Ambridge cricket team |
| 1970/00/00 | Jack started to work part-time on the farm again, after complaining that Ambridge Farmers never considered him in their plans. |
| 1970/00/00 | Mrs P began to suffer from dizzy spells and was put on a diet |
| 1970/00/00 | Nelson offered Lilian Hollowtree Cottage at a nominal rent if she would keep an eye on the flats for him. |
| 1970/00/00 | On Mrs P's birthday, Walter gave her a budgerigar, and Henry Cobb gave her a mynah bird. |
| 1970/00/00 | Polly reorganized the shop on self-service lines. |
| 1970/00/00 | Ralph started on a vast re-organization of the Bellamy Estate - reducing the ewes by half, doubling beef cattle, replacing spring barley with Brussels sprouts, and doubling potatoes to two hundred acres. |
| 1970/00/00 | The kidnappers - Henry Smith and Chloe Tempest - snatched Adam in broad daylight and carried him off to Birmingham. The police at first suspected Sid Perks, but rapidly got on the tracks of Smith and Tempest, and rescued Adam the following day. |
| 1970/00/00 | The village was astounded when Nelson Gabriel suddenly turned out to be the new owner of Hollowtree Farmhouse, which Woolley's firm had spent the summer converting into flats. |
| 1970/00/00 | Tony sent off for details about emigrating to Australia. |
| 1970/00/00 | Tony was threatening to go to Australia, but Bellamy made him dairy manager and sent him on a management course in Borchester instead. |
| 1970/00/00 | Walter Gabriel proposed to Mrs P (who had returned to Ambridge after the death of her second Perkins) but found he had a rival in Henry Cobb, the new cellarman at The Bull. |
| 1970/00/00 | Walter Gabriel was rummaging about in his shed with Dan when they found £500 in used banknotes stuffed down the back of an old armchair. PC Drury took the money away for examination, suspecting that it was part of Nelson's ill-gotten gains. Nelson at first denied all knowledge of the money, but finally told the truth: he had put it down the back of the chair as a surprise present for his father. The police returned the money. |
| 1970/00/00 | Woolley himself spent most of the summer arranging for the conversion of Arkwright Hall into a Field Study Centre. |
| 1970/01/00 | January saw the most astonishing event ever to happen in the village. Jennifer and Roger - now living in Borchester - received a threat that Adam would be kidnapped unless a large sum of money were paid over. Instead of telling the police, Jennifer sent Adam to stay with his grandparents at The Bull. |
| 1970/03/18 | In Canada, Nick died after falling downstairs in hospital. Lilian returned to Ambridge before the end of the month, and went back to work at the stables. |
| 1970/12/24 | Debbie Aldridge born |
| 1970/12/24 | On 24 December, Jennifer gave birth to a baby girl, who was called Deborah. |
| 1971/00/00 | At Brookfield, Gregory Salt gave in his notice and went to work as a rounds man for Borchester Dairies. |
| 1971/00/00 | At Glebe Cottage Dan had a severe attack of lumbago and Doris had trouble with decimal coinage. |
| 1971/00/00 | At the South Borsetshire point-to-point, Lilian won the Ladies Race, and Bellamy proposed to her. A week later she accepted. |
| 1971/00/00 | Bellamy offered to help Phil with a computer assessment of his pig unit, and a 'financier' offered to buy the unit off him. Phil politely turned them both down. |
| 1971/00/00 | Early in the year Jack became unwell, and had to give up his work at Brookfield. He tried to hide his illness from Peggy, but without success. Finally he went into Borchester General Hospital for tests, and was later moved to a sanatorium in Scotland. |
| 1971/00/00 | Hugo Barnaby, John Tregorran's cousin who described himself as an international fine arts 'contact man', returned from a visit to America and bought Nightingale Farm as a rural art centre. He engaged Laura Archer as his assistant curator. |
| 1971/00/00 | In early summer there was a new threat to close the school. The school was saved after several protest meetings. |
| 1971/00/00 | In the spring, Bellamy asked Hugo Barnaby to find a suitable artist to paint a picture of Lilian on Red Knight. |
| 1971/00/00 | Jack Woolley proposed to turn a large part of his estate into a country park that would be open to visitors. The country park went ahead. Woolley refused to attend a discussion in the village hall and organized his own pro-Woolley meeting instead. |
| 1971/00/00 | John Tregorran bought himself an old gypsy caravan (he said it reminded him of the green caravan he lived in when he first came to Ambridge). |
| 1971/00/00 | Lilian saw the New Year in with Ralph Bellamy, who tried to talk about their future together. She told him it was too soon after Nick's death, but agreed to ride his horse Red Knight at the South Borsetshire point-to-point. |
| 1971/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel returned to Ambridge rolling in money, and stayed at Grey Gables until his personal apartment at Hollowtree Flats was ready. |
| 1971/00/00 | Nelson forced his attentions on Lilian one night. She rejected him with scorn. |
| 1971/00/00 | Tony Archer attended a course on 'The Spraying of Chemicals' and started going out with Roberta, Lilian's assistant at the stables. |
| 1971/00/00 | Walter Gabriel bought himself some new glasses with stronger lenses |
| 1971/07/00 | In July, Dan arranged for the erection of a sun lounge extension at Glebe Cottage as a surprise for Doris's birthday, and Doris was thrilled by it. |
| 1971/09/03 | Lilian Bellamy married |
| 1971/09/03 | Ralph Bellamy married |
| 1971/09/03 | Ralph and Lilian were married. Jennifer was matron of honour, and Tony gave Lilian away. Jack was still in the sanatorium and too ill to attend the ceremony. Ralph and Lilian went to Venice for their honeymoon, and on their return moved into the Dower House. |
| 1971/10/00 | In October, Doris gave Dan a smoking jacket for his birthday, and in November they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. |
| 1971/12/12 | Lucy Gemmell born |
| 1971/12/12 | Polly had a baby girl on 12 December, and called her Lucy. |
| 1972/00/00 | At Brookfield Jill was also suffering emotional strain. She told Phil she could not carry on any longer, and said she needed to go away somewhere alone. After the initial shock, Phil promised to arrange something. It was eventually decided that Jill should go to London and stay with an old school friend. Christine offered to cope with the children at Brookfield while she was away, and later Pru was taken on as daily help. |
| 1972/00/00 | At Brookfield, Phil decided to concentrate on rearing calves for beef rather than extend the dairy herd, and bought a Friesian bull for £2,500. |
| 1972/00/00 | Doris took to going out early in the morning without saying where she was going. She told Dan it was to teach him a lesson. |
| 1972/00/00 | Gregory Salt told Nora he had fallen in love with another woman, and asked for a divorce. |
| 1972/00/00 | In the summer, Joe Grundy, a poor tenant on Bellamy's Estate, began to intrude on village affairs. He told Peggy that two girls had spent the night with Tony at Rickyard Cottage. Tony confessed that it was true: he said the girls discussed literature all night and he fell asleep. |
| 1972/00/00 | Joe Grundy challenged Jethro Larkin to a tractor race and lost. |
| 1972/00/00 | Joe Grundy lost out when Martha Lily, a widow from Penny Hassett whom he saw from time to time, fell in love with Joby Woodford, a forester on the Bellamy Estate. |
| 1972/00/00 | Laura tried to buy a hundred acres of land north of Lakey Hill for a caravan park, and asked Sid to run a site shop for her. In the event the land was bought by a Welsh farmer, Haydn Evans, who planned to establish a farm for his son Gwyn. |
| 1972/00/00 | Martha Lily and Joby Woodford were married: the matron of honour was Mrs P, and Tom was best man. |
| 1972/00/00 | Peggy went to see Jack at the clinic in Scotland |
| 1972/00/00 | Phil went to London to see Jill, and they celebrated their fifteenth wedding anniversary together. Soon afterwards Jill returned home unexpectedly. She said she had fully recovered. |
| 1972/00/00 | Polly helped Nora with her emotional problems when her divorce came through. |
| 1972/00/00 | Returning to Ambridge, Peggy decided to move out of The Bull, and offered Sid and Polly the chance to run it. They accepted, and sold the shop to Jack Woolley. Polly became the licencee (Sid still being dogged by his criminal record). |
| 1972/00/00 | Sid and Polly bought some obsolete kitchen equipment from Woolley, and opened a steak bar at The Bull. |
| 1972/00/00 | Sid and Polly moved into The Bull, and decided they could not afford two barmaids. They sacked Pru, and she told Tom he must drink somewhere else in future. Tom went through several days of suffering before she repented. |
| 1972/00/00 | Tom had a hoax phone call saying that Pru was in hospital in Borchester. He dashed to the hospital and poachers stole over five hundred birds from the shoot. |
| 1972/00/00 | Tony fell in love with a girl called Jane Petrie and neglected his work on the Bellamy Estate. Bellamy sacked him, and he immediately went to France without telling anybody. When he returned, Phil gave him a job with Ambridge Farmers. |
| 1972/00/00 | Woolley decided to open a steam railway at the new country park, and took Dan with him to Scotland to buy a steam engine, which he called the Empress of Ambridge. Doris was annoyed when their return was delayed. |
| 1972/01/11 | Jack died on 11 January. |
| 1972/01/12 | Jack Archer died |
| 1972/03/07 | Sharon Richards born |
| 1972/09/20 | An RAF trainer plane crashed near Heydon Berrow, and the entire village turned out to search for survivors. There was only the pilot on board, however, and he baled out and landed in the sewage farm at Borchester. |
| 1972/09/21 | Dan and Tom went to check the church bells and one of the cross beams fell, hitting Dan on the shoulder. The diocesan architect confirmed that there was dry rot in the bell tower, and said the bells should not be rung in future. |
| 1972/11/00 | In November Tony had a fight with Joe Grundy and his sons. |
| 1972/11/09 | Clive Horrobin born |
| 1973/00/00 | A 'new entrant' apprentice, Neil Carter from Birmingham, joined Ambridge Farmers and accidentally mowed a field of oats. |
| 1973/00/00 | At Brookfield Horace the bull was found to be infertile and had to be sold for beef, a bull calf called Jolly died from lead poisoning; and a ewe aborted after being worried by a dog. |
| 1973/00/00 | At The Bull, Sid and Polly closed the steak bar and planned to reopen it as the Ploughman's Bar, serving home-made food. |
| 1973/00/00 | At The Bull, Sid and Polly planned a village trip to Holland for later in the year, and started catering for bed-and-breakfast visitors. Nora McAuley was appointed accommodation hostess. |
| 1973/00/00 | Bellamy took over as chairman of Ambridge Wanderers football team, and told Sid (the manager) that he expected more team discipline in future. |
| 1973/00/00 | Both Doris and Jill worried about Phil suffering from overwork and strain, particularly after he crashed his car on the way home from Borchester. A breathalyzer test proved negative. |
| 1973/00/00 | Dan was elected chairman of the Ambridge Festival organizing committee, |
| 1973/00/00 | Doris held a wine and cheese party for those connected with the cottage gardens contest. |
| 1973/00/00 | Elizabeth was rushed to hospital after eating mercury-dressed grain. |
| 1973/00/00 | In May, there was a robbery at Grey Gables. Peggy found Woolley seriously injured in the club lounge, and he was rushed to hospital. He did not regain consciousness for several days. Paintings and silver were stolen. |
| 1973/00/00 | It was a difficult autumn for Joe Grundy. After spending some weeks in hospital with farmers' lung he was put on a strict diet by his doctor, and collapsed from malnutrition outside The Bull. When he recovered he crashed his lorry into the village pump and demolished it. |
| 1973/00/00 | Many villagers, including Dan, Doris, Carol Tregorran, and Christine, went on Sid's trip to Holland. A good time was had by all. |
| 1973/00/00 | Martha took in Neil Carter as a lodger. |
| 1973/00/00 | Nora discovered that a new keeper on Woolley's estate - Yorkshire ex-policeman George Barford - was an alcoholic. She tried to befriend him, but he was unwilling to be helped. He told her his wife was a Catholic, and there could be no future for them. |
| 1973/00/00 | Phil agreed to run a pop group for the Ambridge Festival and Doris offered to look after the cottage gardens contest. Woolley underwrote the losses. |
| 1973/00/00 | Phil became leader of Ambridge Scout Troop, and Woolley gave him a bugle. |
| 1973/00/00 | The Ambridge Festival was a success, and Phil organized singing by the Ambridge Folk Chorale. |
| 1973/00/00 | Tony left Ambridge Farmers, and went into partnership with Haydn Evans at Willow Farm. Soon afterwards he met a travelling farm secretary, Mary Weston, and fell in love with her. |
| 1973/00/00 | Woolley sold Ambridge Hall to Laura, then found she had not enough money to buy it. (Disastrous dealings on the stock exchange also forced her to sack Fairlie and sell her motor car.) Woolley worked out a scheme by which Laura could occupy the Hall during her lifetime, after which it would revert to him. |
| 1973/00/00 | Woolley threatened to close the village shop, but changed his mind after Walter and Mrs P presented him with a petition from the Over-Sixties. He took on Martha Woodford as sub-postmistress. |
| 1973/03/30 | James Bellamy born |
| 1973/03/30 | On 30 March, Lilian gave birth to a son, James Rodney Dominic. She engaged a nanny called Mrs Beard. |
| 1973/06/00 | Jill heard that the village school was finally to close, and there was no chance of a reprieve. |
| 1973/06/00 | Thirty ewes and their lambs were stolen from Lakey Hill. |
| 1973/08/00 | In August, Woolley was told by Valerie that she wanted a divorce, and immediately collapsed with a heart attack. He was ordered to rest, and Peggy took over running Grey Gables. |
| 1973/12/00 | At Christmas, Ambridge's old roadman Zebedee Tring was discovered dead in his cottage, his dog Gyp and cat Queenie beside him. They were both found good homes. |
| 1974/00/00 | Ann Moore watched Shula riding Mister Jones and said she showed promise as a competition rider. Phil agreed to support her, if she would also do a secretarial course at Borchester Tech. |
| 1974/00/00 | At Willow Farm Tony was having a difficult first winter. The soaring cost of feedstuffs led him to rely too heavily on silage, and his milk yields fell. The dairy complained about low butter-fat content in his milk, and two cows were blown through eating clover. Then four heifers developed New Forest disease. By June - with calves fetching only £1 each at Borchester Market - he was only just keeping his head above water, and was relieved he had not gone in for pigs or beef cattle. |
| 1974/00/00 | Dan had several ewe hogs stolen from Lakey Hill |
| 1974/00/00 | Early in the year, Laura organized WI members to bake pastries and pies for the new Ploughman's Bar at The Bull, |
| 1974/00/00 | George spotted strangers loitering round the Dower House, and with help from Tom and Harry Booker caught thieves robbing the house with a removal van. |
| 1974/00/00 | In competition with Walter, Joe Grundy opened a caravan site, and Walter maliciously sent some tinkers to stay on it. Joe sent them back to Walter's caravan site, and Walter got PC Drury to move them out of the village altogether. |
| 1974/00/00 | In the summer, Tony received a letter from Mary Weston breaking off their engagement. |
| 1974/00/00 | It was a good harvest at Willow Farm, and Tony sold his corn straight off the combine. |
| 1974/00/00 | Jack Woolley proposed to Peggy and she refused him. |
| 1974/00/00 | Jennifer said she wanted a separation from Roger. She moved into Wynford's with Christine, and started going out bowling with Woolley's second keeper, Gordon Armstrong. Their late return from Borchester caused comment in the village. |
| 1974/00/00 | John Tregorran went on a lecture tour of America after warning Hugo Barnaby to stay clear of Carol. |
| 1974/00/00 | Kenton left to go to sea as a merchant navy cadet. |
| 1974/00/00 | Neil Carter met a girl called Sandy Miller, and went with her to a wild party in Borchester. The party was raided by the police, and drugged cigarettes were found in Neil's pocket. He was placed on probation by Borchester magistrates. |
| 1974/00/00 | Paul Johnson flew off to work in Germany, and Roger Travers-Macy took a job away from home, selling antiquarian books. |
| 1974/00/00 | Peggy became friendly with a man called Dave Escott who was starting an interior design business, but later discovered he was just touting for business. |
| 1974/00/00 | Phil started freeze-branding his cows to deter cattle rustlers. |
| 1974/00/00 | Polly was found to have an ectopic pregnancy in a Fallopian tube, and went into hospital for an operation. |
| 1974/00/00 | Shula became friendly with a much older man - hi-fl fanatic Eric Selwyn - at Borchester Tech. |
| 1974/00/00 | Tom and Pru found George Barford semi-conscious in the Lodge. He had attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. When Nora McAuley found out, she moved into the Lodge with him, and said she intended to stay. George did not object, but many villagers were scandalized. |
| 1974/00/00 | Tony and Mary Weston held their engagement party at the Bull on 24 January. |
| 1974/00/00 | Tony met Haydn Evans's niece, Pat Lewis, who had come to help her uncle after he slipped a disc. Not long after, Pat proposed to him and he accepted. |
| 1974/00/00 | Towards the end of the year Pat and Tony were married. |
| 1974/03/00 | There was an outbreak of SVD at Hollowtree and Phil's entire herd was slaughtered. He later replaced them with minimal-disease pigs. |
| 1974/07/15 | Gary Horrobin born |
| 1974/11/00 | Bellamy was told by a Harley Street specialist that he needed complete rest if he were to avoid a heart attack. He decided to retire: he and Lilian would sell the estate and leave the village, keeping only one thousand acres as a future inheritance for James. |
| 1974/12/12 | Pat Archer married |
| 1974/12/12 | Tony Archer married |
| 1975/00/00 | After a long search, Sid and Polly bought a cottage in Penny Hassett for £4,500 and started to renovate it. |
| 1975/00/00 | After a row with George, Nora moved back to The Bull and told Polly she was pregnant. Shortly afterwards she had a miscarriage, and George asked her to move back to the Lodge and make a fresh start. |
| 1975/00/00 | After an outbreak of vandalism, PC Drury suspected Neil of wrecking phone boxes and spraying the Pounds' farm-shop sign with paint. He searched Neil's locker at Brookfield - without per-mission - and was attacked by a furious Jill, who threatened to complain to the chief constable. Drury apologized. |
| 1975/00/00 | At Brookfield Phil was delighted by his maize, which withstood the drought and grew quickly with the first September rains. |
| 1975/00/00 | At Hollowtree two pigs died from fighting, and others developed anaemia when Neil forgot to give them iron injections. |
| 1975/00/00 | At Willow Farm, Pat bought one hundred free-range hens, and Tony exchanged his sports car for a van. |
| 1975/00/00 | Carol Tregorran gave a dinner party for Brian and he met Jennifer (who had now been asked for a divorce by Roger). He started taking her out to dinner now and then. |
| 1975/00/00 | Dan shot Joe Grundy's dog, Jacko, when he saw it apparently worrying sheep. He later bought Joe another dog. |
| 1975/00/00 | Despite the village's misgivings, Joe Grundy held a successful pop concert at Grange Farm. |
| 1975/00/00 | Hardly any rain fell during June, July and August - and at Home Farm Brian Aldridge found his spring barley hardly worth harvesting, and his sugar beet yields far lower than he had expected. |
| 1975/00/00 | In the early summer, John Tregorran returned home from America and said he was back for good. |
| 1975/00/00 | Jack Woolley accepted a race horse - Grey Silk - in settlement of a debt. |
| 1975/00/00 | Jethro broke his leg when he fell through the floor of a loft at Brookfield. Phil was almost prosecuted for negligence -the floor was unsafe - and had to pay Jethro compensation. |
| 1975/00/00 | Joe Grundy won first prize with his marrows at the Flower and Produce Show, and also won first prize in Laura's raffle in aid of church funds: the prize was a luxury weekend for two at Grey Gables. |
| 1975/00/00 | Kenton returned on leave, and brought Shula a grass skirt from Tahiti. |
| 1975/00/00 | On Lakey Hill, Dan's sheep developed twin-lambing disease when he cut back the feed to his in-lamb ewes. |
| 1975/00/00 | Paul Johnson came back to Ambridge only briefly. After an extraordinary series of jobs (including flying helicopters and opening German exhibition sites), he had ended up as an engineer on a Welsh oil rig. No oil had been found, and he now had a new job in London. |
| 1975/00/00 | Polly's father, arsonist Frank Mead, died in a mental hospital. |
| 1975/00/00 | Sid voted 'no' in the Common Market referendum. |
| 1975/00/00 | The break-up of the Bellamy Estate brought a newcomer to the village: rich, thirty- two-year-old bachelor Brian Aldridge, who bought 1500 acres and a farmhouse. |
| 1975/00/00 | The vicar moved into a new vicarage. Walter took a bottle of elderberry wine to the housewarming party, and made Doris tiddly. |
| 1975/00/00 | Work on the re-hanging of the church bells began |
| 1975/01/00 | Bandits set up a road block and tried to attack the post-bus - carrying Walter and Laura - with iron bars. Harry Booker drove the bus over the fields to safety, and Laura cracked her false teeth. |
| 1975/07/16 | Tracy Horrobin born |
| 1975/10/00 | In October Laura roused the Ambridge Protection Society to stop the last surviving elm tree in the village from being cut down. |
| 1975/12/00 | Doris and Christine were Christmas shopping when they met Carol in a Felpersham store. A store detective accused Carol of shop-lifting, and two pens - unpaid for - were found in her bag. The shop said they would prosecute. |
| 1975/12/31 | December, Pat gave birth to a son, John Daniel. |
| 1975/12/31 | John Archer born |
| 1976/00/00 | A new editor for the Borchester Echo was taken on by Jack Woolley, a young man called Simon Parker, formerly a reporter on the Felpersham Evening Post. |
| 1976/00/00 | After Michele Brown returned from holiday with Shula, she took a job at Grey Gables as a waitress and moved into Nightingale Farm with Neil. |
| 1976/00/00 | After complaining about tiredness for several weeks, Jill collapsed and was rushed to Borchester General Hospital suffering from a thyroid deficiency. She was in hospital for three weeks. |
| 1976/00/00 | At Brookfield, Phil took on another farm worker, Fred Wakefield. |
| 1976/00/00 | At Stow Fair Brian bought Debbie a skewbald pony called Moonbeam. |
| 1976/00/00 | At the market garden Carol lost her manager, Arthur Tovey, who died when his aluminium ladder touched a power cable. |
| 1976/00/00 | Brian Aldridge proposed to Jennifer and she accepted. |
| 1976/00/00 | Carol Tregorran was found not guilty of shoplifting at Felpersham Crown Court. (She had dropped the pens in to her bag accidentally while chatting to Doris and Christine.) |
| 1976/00/00 | Home Farm was burgled by youths, and a radio and £50 were stolen. |
| 1976/05/29 | Jennifer's divorce came through, and she and Brian were married quietly at Borchester Registry Office. Brian bought her twelve Jacob sheep, and she took up spinning and weaving. |
| 1976/00/00 | Joe Grundy arrived alone at Grey Gables for his luxury weekend for two, and annoyed Woolley by demanding the other half of his prize in cash. |
| 1976/00/00 | Laura took in a lodger, Colonel Frederick Danby, who had retired from the army and worked as regional organizer for a national charity. |
| 1976/00/00 | Neil's affections were all for Shula. He fell in love with her and his work began to suffer. |
| 1976/00/00 | Paul arrived home unexpectedly and confessed that he had been having an affair with another woman, but it was all over. All he wanted was to return to Christine and Peter. He resigned his London job, but the other woman - called Brenda - followed him to Ambridge. Christine sent her packing. |
| 1976/00/00 | Shula made friends with Michele Brown, a New Zealand girl who came to Ambridge with a shearing gang. They arranged to go for a holiday hitch-hiking round Europe together. |
| 1976/00/00 | Shula was more interested in Simon Parker, the new editor of the Echo, and in the campaign to stop Borchester Grammar School from going comprehensive. She helped organize a 'Save Borchester Grammar' protest march, to Jill's considerable annoyance. |
| 1976/00/00 | Tom retired as sporting manager at Grey Gables (Woolley gave him a silver tea service) and started work at Woolley's new garden centre, which opened at Easter. |
| 1976/00/00 | Woolley was irritated to find that Higgs was using the Bentley to visit his lady friend at Hollerton Junction. |
| 1976/05/29 | Brian Aldridge married |
| 1976/05/29 | Jennifer Aldridge married |
| 1976/07/00 | At the village fete, George Barford played a cornet solo with the Hollerton Town Band, and Christine organized a pony club display. |
| 1976/11/00 | In November, Laura organized an Edwardian Evening at Grey Gables. |
| 1976/12/00 | Dan and Doris went to Guernsey to visit Lilian, and Doris caught bronchitis. They were both away from Ambridge for Christmas. |
| 1977/00/00 | At The Bull, Sid took on a temporary barmaid, Caroline Bone from Darrington, who had finished a cordon bleu cookery course in London and wanted to prove to her mother that she could earn her own keep. |
| 1977/00/00 | At the fish-farm, twenty thousand seven-inch trout were lost when a filter was blocked. |
| 1977/00/00 | Dan attended the Jubilee party and barbecue in a wheelchair. |
| 1977/00/00 | George's son, Terry Barford (who had come to Ambridge after getting into trouble with the police), was patrolling the woods with his father when he came across Joe Grundy, and hit him over the head. It turned out, however, that Grundy was not poaching, but earth-stopping for the hunt. |
| 1977/00/00 | Jethro developed gum trouble, and started leaving his denture in unexpected places. Jill forcibly took him to the dentist, who extracted his last remaining teeth. |
| 1977/00/00 | Mike Tucker approached Haydn Evans about taking over Tony's partnership, and Haydn agreed to the idea. |
| 1977/00/00 | Neil recruited Shula to help run the youth club, and she recruited him for the Young Conservatives. |
| 1977/00/00 | Part of Walter Gabriel's cottage roof blew off in a storm and Doris persuaded him to stay at Glebe Cottage for a while. In the following weeks he moved on to Brookfield, Wynford's, and Mary Pound's house. |
| 1977/00/00 | Paul Johnson started a fish farm and sold the paddock at Wynford's to pay for it. |
| 1977/00/00 | Paul went bankrupt and then disappeared in Christine's car. It was found next day in London. Eventually Paul was discovered in Hamburg: he told Christine he was never coming back. |
| 1977/00/00 | Phil was depressed that Shula had begun to go out regularly with Simon Parker, whom he referred to as 'that inky blighter'. |
| 1977/00/00 | Phil was not pleased to hear that Jill had joined an action group to stop Borchester Grammar going independent. Both he and Shula accused her of mixing with some very odd left-wing types. |
| 1977/00/00 | Shula and Neil stayed on Lakey Hill until early morning, watching the string of bonfires as far away as Malvern and Wenlock Edge. |
| 1977/00/00 | Shula danced with Alf Grundy at a Young Conservative hop and Joe gave her a French cookery book that had belonged to his wife Susan. He told Jill that he would welcome Shula as a daughter-in-law. |
| 1977/00/00 | Shula organized a children's meet for the hunt, and Jennifer took Adam and Debbie hunting for the first time. |
| 1977/00/00 | Shula rode Mister Jones in the South Borsetshire point-to-point and came fourth. But she finally abandoned hopes of a career with horses, and got a job with Rodway and Watson, a small Borchester estate agent. |
| 1977/00/00 | The 'Supercooks' scheme was begun by Shula and Michele, catering for peoples' private dinner parties. |
| 1977/00/00 | The Tuckers were forced to leave Rickyard Cottage as Phil needed it for his new cowman, Graham Collard and moved into Willow Farm with Pat and Tony. To Pat's horror, Mike turned out to be a Country and Western addict, and brought his record player with him. |
| 1977/00/00 | The following month Dan slipped and strained his back while watching the lighting of the Jubilee bonfire on Lakey Hill. |
| 1977/00/00 | The garden at Nightingale Farm was devastated when Grundy's two pigs escaped and ran amok. Michele impounded the pigs until Grundy paid her £25 compensation. |
| 1977/00/00 | Tony was offered the tenancy of Bridge Farm by his brother-in law Ralph. |
| 1977/00/00 | While out riding with his girl-friend, Sarah Brinkley, Adam was bitten by an adder and taken to Borchester General Hospital. He was seriously ill, and only recovered after being treated with a new type of vaccine. |
| 1977/01/00 | Dan was made chairman of the committee organizing celebrations for the Queen's Jubilee, to take place in June. |
| 1977/04/00 | Terry was arrested after being found drunk in possession of a stolen car, which he had driven into a lamp-post. He was later sent to a detention centre for three months. |
| 1977/05/00 | Pat's mother was taken ill in Wales, and she went to look after her. Tony started flirting with the district milk-recording girl, Libby Jones, and scandalized the rest of the Archer family by taking her to the Cricket Club dance. Jennifer thought he was having an affair, but Brian doubted he was capable. |
| 1977/09/30 | Kate Aldridge born |
| 1977/09/30 | On 30 September, Jennifer gave birth to a daughter, Katherine Victoria. |
| 1978/00/00 | Ambridge celebrated May Day in the traditional English manner, with Maypole dancing and a May Queen. During the festivities Simon Parker told Shula he was leaving the Borchester Echo and going to work in London. |
| 1978/00/00 | At Home Farm, Brian hit a work-shy employee, Jack Roberts, after giving him the sack. When Mike Tucker took up the man's case, Jennifer threw a garden rake at him. Peggy said Jennifer had become more violent since she had met Brian. |
| 1978/00/00 | At The Bull, Sid took on a new barmaid - Jackie Smith, a Londoner who had come to Borchester in pursuit of a brewery rep. |
| 1978/00/00 | Christine moved out of Wynford's and into the stables' farmhouse (now owned by Ambridge Farmers). |
| 1978/00/00 | David Archer once again failed his A-level maths, and had to give up his plans to go to university. Instead he decided to take a two year course at agricultural college. |
| 1978/00/00 | Eddie returned to Grange Farm and Joe and Eddie started a turkey venture. Joe's cows were slaughtered under the brucellosis eradication scheme, and he received full compensation. |
| 1978/00/00 | George Barford helped chop wood for Christine and they became friends. She was able to sympathize from personal experience when Nora left George and went to live with a man in Borchester. |
| 1978/00/00 | George Barford's divorce came through, and Terry wrote to say he had joined the Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire. |
| 1978/00/00 | George asked Christine to marry him, and she said yes. She also said she wanted to be married in church, and after much heartsearching, Richard Adamson agreed to perform the ceremony. |
| 1978/00/00 | In March, Shula and Mary Pound found Joe Grundy delirious in his farmhouse, suffering from a bad dose of flu, and abandoned by Eddie and his girlfriend. |
| 1978/00/00 | Jennifer and Brian-irritated by delays over the building of their swimming pool - went on holiday to the Seychelles. |
| 1978/00/00 | Jennifer decided to get an au pair girl. A few weeks later Eva Lenz a blonde nineteen-year-old from Stuttgart arrived at Home Farm. |
| 1978/00/00 | Jethro astounded the village by announcing that his Uncle Charlie had died and left him a fortune. Clarrie gave up her cleaning jobs and became a lady of leisure before discovering that the fortune amounted to only £4,200. Clarrie went back to cleaning, and Jethro bought a second-hand car with Neil. |
| 1978/00/00 | Jill was persuaded to join Jennifer in a craft shop venture at Home Farm called the Two Jays. |
| 1978/00/00 | Joe's cows were infected with brucellosis, and his favourite hob ferret, Turk, was discovered dead in a trap. Joe said he was past caring about anything. |
| 1978/00/00 | Walter realized his carved wooden animals were a success in the Two Jays shop and took them away and opened his own Wally G craft studio. Both ventures ended in disaster. Jill was £150 in debt, and Phil had to find the money. |
| 1978/00/00 | Word came that Paul had been killed in a car crash in Germany. |
| 1978/02/00 | Tony and Pat moved into Bridge Farm and bought themselves a second-hand herringbone milking parlour. |
| 1978/02/02 | Roy Tucker born |
| 1978/05/10 | Paul Johnson died |
| 1978/07/00 | Neil was rushed to hospital suffering from Weil's disease, which he had picked up from touching rat's urine with a cut hand. He was ill for some weeks, then went to a union convalescent home. When he returned, Mike Tucker blackmailed him into taking on the job of local union secretary. |
| 1978/08/00 | Doris was upset when Woolley announced a scheme to build houses opposite Glebe Cottage. |
| 1978/08/00 | The parish council opposed Jack's housing development but Jack called a parish meeting and gained widespread support. The scheme - Glebelands - went ahead |
| 1979/00/00 | A hungry vixen took several of Brian's early lambs and proved too cunning for the hunt. In the end, Brian went out and shot it - then was too ashamed to tell anyone. |
| 1979/00/00 | Ambridge's new policeman, PC Coverdale, proposed to Eva and was accepted. |
| 1979/00/00 | Andrew Sinclair gave Joe six months to improve the farm or face eviction. |
| 1979/00/00 | At Grange Farm, Joe Grundy was delighted when Eddie proposed to marry Dolly Treadgold. He put up new curtains in the parlour and looked forward to welcoming his daughter in- law and unpaid housekeeper. Eddie and Dolly soon split up. |
| 1979/00/00 | Brian agreed to buy Hollowtree pig unit as the basis of a large-scale pig-fattening venture. When half the village objected, he gave the idea up, and left Phil struggling for cash to buy his land. |
| 1979/00/00 | Carol Tregorran and Peggy tried to form a syndicate with Martha to take the shop over, but Woolley dismissed their offer as ludicrous. In the end, he decided to keep the shop, and hired Dorothy Adamson to help Martha two afternoons a week. |
| 1979/00/00 | Carol Tregorran nearly bought a second-hand Jaguar off Harry Booker, then discovered it was a 'ringer' - the front of one car and the back of another, joined in the middle. |
| 1979/00/00 | Caroline Bone returned to the Bull after the collapse of her Bristol wine bar. Sid offered her the chance to prepare exciting food for the Ploughman's. |
| 1979/00/00 | Caroline Bone went to work at Grey Gables, and Nelson stayed there after bringing Walter home from Tenerife. |
| 1979/00/00 | Doris suffered from mouth ulcers under her dental plate. |
| 1979/00/00 | Eddie and Dolly Treadgold got engaged again, and Joe prepared the turkey shed for a lavish reception. He borrowed the Brookfield flags, and ordered vast quantities of chicken legs and vol-au-vents from Caroline. The day before the wedding, however, Eddie called it off - he said Dolly was too flighty. |
| 1979/00/00 | Jackie left the Bull in pursuit of a sports instructor called Basil |
| 1979/00/00 | Jennifer entered one of her Jacobs at the Royal Show but failed to win anything. |
| 1979/00/00 | Joe Grundy went to the Royal Show in early July, and was impressed by a display of deer farming and the possibility of selling deer's velvet to the Japanese as an aphrodisiac. |
| 1979/00/00 | Martha Woodford developed mild pneumonia, and was off work for several weeks. When she returned, she told Woolley she could not cope by herself, so Woolley decided to sell the shop, and told Martha the new buyer would probably give her the sack. |
| 1979/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel turned up unexpectedly, saying he had been in Venezuela and Spain. He took Walter abroad for a holiday. |
| 1979/00/00 | Nelson bounced a cheque at The Bull, and Woolley discovered he was penniless and kicked him out. |
| 1979/00/00 | Phil decided to bid for thirty acres of Meadow Farm. |
| 1979/00/00 | Shula decided to go on an overland trip across Asia, then on to visit Michele Brown in New Zealand. Phil reluctantly agreed to find the money and Shula set off- accompanied by Nick Wearing, who had spent several months at Brookfield gaining practical farming experience. |
| 1979/00/00 | Shula phoned from Bangkok to say all her money had been stolen. Phil had to telex funds to her, and she arrived home with a prayer wheel for Jill. She asked Phil to pay her hunt subscription. |
| 1979/00/00 | Sid collapsed with an ear infection immediately after sending Polly and Lucy to Weston for a holiday. |
| 1979/00/00 | Tony was confused when Pat went off to Wales with the children, saying she did not want him to go with her. He spent two anxious weeks worrying about his marriage before Pat returned home. She made him promise to relax more and work less. |
| 1979/00/00 | Walter Gabriel was taken to hospital suffering from a sugar imbalance. All attempts to track down Nelson failed - his London office was discovered to be a seedy accommodation address in Notting Hill. |
| 1979/03/01 | Christine Barford married |
| 1979/03/01 | Christine and George were married in Ambridge parish church. Tom was best man, and Christine wore a wedding dress of cream and old-gold satin. |
| 1979/03/01 | George Barford married |
| 1979/04/16 | Helen Archer born |
| 1979/04/16 | On 16 April, Pat gave birth to a daughter, Helen, who had a dislocated hip and had to wear a special harness for three months. |
| 1979/12/00 | Nelson spent a miserable Christmas with Walter at Honeysuckle Cottage. |
| 1980/00/00 | Andrene arrives as one of the first waitresses in Nelson Gabriel's Wine Bar. |
| 1980/00/00 | At Brookfield, Phil planned a major reorganization of the farm -increasing the sheep to three hundred ewes, draining the new thirty acres, and applying for a potato quota. |
| 1980/00/00 | At Grange Farm, Joe Grundy went back into milk, and built up a herd of twenty cows. |
| 1980/00/00 | Colonel Danby bought a pig, and called it Edric. |
| 1980/00/00 | Colonel Danby wrestled with his conscience and finally proposed to Laura, but she turned him down. |
| 1980/00/00 | Dan and Doris spent several weeks of the summer with Lilian in Guernsey. |
| 1980/00/00 | David alarmed Jill by going out with the notorious playgirl Jackie Woodstock, Shula's arch-rival on the committee of Borchester Young Conservatives. |
| 1980/00/00 | David's twenty-first birthday was celebrated in style with a dance in the barn at Brookfield. |
| 1980/00/00 | Eddie Grundy meets Clarrie Larkin when he is hired to replace the old range in the Larkins' kitchen. |
| 1980/00/00 | Eddie captained The Cat and Fiddle darts team when they beat The Bull team in a 'friendly' match, and Lilian gave the victors a brass Viking. |
| 1980/00/00 | Eddie got a job as a lorry driver, but gave it up when Joe finally agreed to pay him a wage. |
| 1980/00/00 | Eddie started walking out with Clarrie Larkin, but Jethro was horrified and said she would come to ruin. |
| 1980/00/00 | In Guernsey, Ralph Bellamy died after a heart attack. |
| 1980/00/00 | Jennifer was just about the last person in the village to realize that John Tregorran had fallen in love with her. He made his feelings clear during a survey of Leaders Wood, and Jennifer fled from him. |
| 1980/00/00 | Jennifer's parish survey team made the major discovery of a forgotten medieval village, and found evidence that an ancient stone chapel was now part of the Grundys' cider cellar. |
| 1980/00/00 | John Tregorran and Jennifer organized a study group to carry out a landscape survey of Ambridge. Colonel Danby, Pat and Caroline agreed to help. |
| 1980/00/00 | John immediately went to America to organize a series of antique fairs. |
| 1980/00/00 | Lilian returned to Ambridge and annoyed Tony by refusing to discuss his need for a silage clamp. |
| 1980/00/00 | Lilian scandalized Peggy by drinking and being friendly with Eddie Grundy. |
| 1980/00/00 | Lizzie Larkin died. Jethro was badly affected and slow to recover from the shock. Clarrie reluctantly stopped seeing Eddie Grundy for a while. |
| 1980/00/00 | Mrs P was scandalized by Eva's nocturnal visits to the police house. When her purse was lost in Borchester she told the desk sergeant about PC Coverdale's immorality, and Coverdale was severely rebuked. |
| 1980/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel opens a wine bar in a disused warehouse in West Street, Borchester, modelled as an American speakeasy with a picture of Al Capone on the wall. |
| 1980/00/00 | Nelson continued to run up debts. Woolley finally paid them off on condition he left the area. Nelson went - only to return a few weeks later and repay every penny he owed. |
| 1980/00/00 | Nelson stayed in Borchester and opened a wine bar. |
| 1980/00/00 | PC James Coverdale insinuates that Eddie Grundy has been poaching deer in the Country Park (Eddie is, in fact, innocent). |
| 1980/00/00 | Pat and Tony decided to go into pigs in a small way, and bought two in-pig sows from Phil. |
| 1980/00/00 | Penelope Radford makes a brief visit to Ambridge. She is Nelson Gabriel's girlfriend and her father is a successful wine merchant. |
| 1980/00/00 | Percy Jordan helps out at Willow Farm when Tony Archer is recovering from tetanus. |
| 1980/00/00 | Phil failed to get an FHDS grant (designed for inefficient farmers) and sold his beef cattle to Brian Aldridge. |
| 1980/00/00 | Romance between Neil Carter and Vikki Schofield who met at the opening of Nelson Gabriel's wine bar. |
| 1980/00/00 | Shula found a new boyfriend: Mark Hebden, a twenty-six-year-old solicitor. She soon decided he was boring, but he recovered ground with her after running to the rescue of a fallow deer being attacked by a lurcher in the country park. The deer kicked him, Shula helped him to Grey Gables, and Caroline put him to bed. |
| 1980/00/00 | Spray drift from one of Brian's fields badly affected Carol's market garden crops. |
| 1980/00/00 | Terry Barford becomes corporal (Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Yorkshire). |
| 1980/00/00 | The Coverdales' marriage became a talking point when Eva turned up on the doorstep at Home Farm in tears, and Coverdale refused to collect her for several days. They resolved their differences, however, and departed happily to Plymouth, where Jim felt his promotion prospects would be better. |
| 1980/00/00 | The Over Sixties Club turned down Laura's plan for the traditional outing to Weston, and went on a jaunt to London organized by Nelson Gabriel. |
| 1980/00/00 | The Tregorrans (Carol and John) return to Ambridge from America. The village was subsequently to be suspicious that the affair between John and Jennifer Aldridge had been resumed but this was not the case. |
| 1980/00/00 | Tony Archer contracts tetanus after scratching himself on a rusty nail. Convalescence is difficult for him and he turns to drink. Pat eventually has enough and leaves, taking the children with her. Tony comes to his senses and Pat returns. |
| 1980/00/00 | Tony got tetanus poisoning and was seriously ill for several weeks. Soon after he recovered, Pat discovered that she was pregnant again. |
| 1980/01/18 | Ralph Bellamy died |
| 1980/05/09 | Eva was married to PC Coverdale in Ambridge parish church. She wore a cream silk, full-length, Empire line wedding dress, the reception was at Home Farm, and they went on honeymoon to the Canaries. |
| 1980/07/00 | David returned home from college and joined his father at Brookfield. After some initial tension he settled down happily and helped Phil to set up the new sheep handling yards and to buy three hundred ewes for Lakey Hill. |
| 1980/10/27 | Doris Archer died |
| 1981/00/00 | Adam Macy goes to Sherborne, Brian Aldridge's old school. |
| 1981/00/00 | Alan Fraser comes to live at the Lodge and has romance with Caroline Bone. He leaves in the New Year and never returns. |
| 1981/00/00 | Eddie Grundy makes demonstration Country and Western tape with Jolene Rogers. He borrows the money for this from Baggy; Clarrie gives him the money providing Eddie marries her. |
| 1981/00/00 | Flower festival held in St Stephen's to celebrate the dedication of the church 700 years before. A medieval concert in the evening included traditional instruments such as a krumhorn, psaltery and 15th century spinet. |
| 1981/00/00 | Haydn Evans, proprietor of the village garage, retires and returns to Wales. Garage is closed for good. |
| 1981/00/00 | Mark Hebden proposes to Shula Archer; she accepts. They buy a cottage in Penny Hassett. In July Shula calls the marriage off. |
| 1981/00/00 | PC James Coverdale and his wife, Eva, leave for Plymouth. |
| 1981/00/00 | Paddy Redmond, father of Jennifer Aldridge's first child, briefly appears in Ambridge, looking for Nora McAuley. Nora tells him about his son, of whose existence he was unaware. He wants to see Jennifer and Adam but Brian Aldridge gets involved and threatens legal action. Shortly before he leaves to return to Ulster, he catches a glimpse of Jennifer and Adam. |
| 1981/01/21 | Brenda Tucker born |
| 1981/02/25 | Tommy Archer born |
| 1981/11/21 | Clarrie Grundy married |
| 1981/11/21 | Eddie Grundy married |
| 1982/00/00 | Ben Warner arrives. He is in his forties, has a shaved head and wears a kaftan. He generally creates feeling of unease and distrust. |
| 1982/00/00 | Guiseppe, manager of Grey Gables, leaves. |
| 1982/00/00 | Julie is employed in The Bull by Sid after his wife Polly died. She goes out with Neil Carter. |
| 1982/00/00 | Mark Hebden has an affair with Jackie Woodstock. Later he becomes engaged to Sarah Locke. |
| 1982/00/00 | Mrs Walker is employed by Jennifer Aldridge as cleaning lady. Jennifer is not quite what Mrs Walker is used to - she prefers Lower Loxley. Mrs Walker increases her hours at Lower Loxley in preference to Home Farm and eventually hands in her notice. |
| 1982/00/00 | Phil Archer plans to drain and plough Palmer's Meadow. IN the face of Jennifer Aldridge's opposition and the scrutiny of Myra Prestwick, member of the Borsetshire Conservation Trust, Phil withdraws his plan. |
| 1982/00/00 | Robin Catchpole, reporter with the Borchester Echo and ladykiller, leaves for London. |
| 1982/02/10 | Polly Perks died |
| 1983/00/00 | Ambridge Farmers Ltd buy some of Willow Farm land. |
| 1983/00/00 | Ben Warner is discovered stealing from Blossom Hill Cottage by Shula Archer. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to five counts of burglary and sent to prison. |
| 1983/00/00 | Bill Insley buys Willow Farm and 15 acres of land from Phil Archer. He takes up breeding rare pigs and the advice of Neil Carter. |
| 1983/00/00 | David Archer returns from Amsterdam, buys a Triumph Spitfire and falls in love with Sophie Barlow. |
| 1983/00/00 | Eddie and Joe Grundy forsake the Cat and Fiddle for a couple of months when they discover the relief landlord used to be in the army and had run a boxing club. |
| 1983/00/00 | Kathy Holland arrives in Ambridge. She is separated from her husband, Steve. She starts work teaching Home Economics in Borchester where her students include Lucy Perks and rents Rose Cottage, owned by Sid Perks. |
| 1983/00/00 | Ken Pound dies and leaves his stuffed vampire bat to Mike Tucker. His dying wish was that Joe Grundy and Mike Tucker should become good neighbours and Ken's wife, Mary, organised the shaking of the hands after the funeral. Mary left Ambridge to live in a bungalow in Edgeley. |
| 1983/00/00 | Ken and Mary Pound retire from Ambridge Farm. |
| 1983/00/00 | Mandy Barnes, a chiropodist, visits Dan Archer and Walter Gabriel. She described Dan's feet as remarkable but didn't explain why. |
| 1983/00/00 | Mike and Betty Tucker new tenants of Ambridge Farm. |
| 1983/00/00 | Mrs Mabel Bagshawe gets left behind in Weston on an OAP outing. |
| 1983/00/00 | Neil Carter proposes to Julie, the barmaid at The Bull. They plan an autumn Register Office wedding, then Julie changes her mind after seeing Clarrie's wedding photographs and decides on a church wedding in June. She plans to wear a white jumpsuit. She accepts an invitation to the policeman's ball from Det Sgt Barry and realises she is not ready to settle down. The engagement is broken off and Julie leaves for London. |
| 1983/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel remodels his wine bar and introduces happy hours and cocktails. |
| 1983/00/00 | Pat Archer attends CND meetings and meets Rose. Rose is unhappy with her boyfriend so Pat invites her to stay at Bridge Farm. Also staying there is Peggy Archer who, along with Tony Archer, dislikes Pat. Pat returns home on Christmas Eve. |
| 1983/00/00 | Phil and Jill Archer install new kitchen at Brookfield. |
| 1983/00/00 | Sid and Kathy Perks and Guy Pemberton buy The Bull. |
| 1983/00/00 | Susan Horrobin wins pig at village fete; Neil Carter helps look after it. |
| 1983/00/00 | Virginia Derwent ("the ice maiden") visits Caroline Bone and has a brief fling with David Archer. |
| 1983/00/00 | When Valerie Woolie dies Jack blames himself for driving her to drink. |
| 1983/00/00 | William Grundy christened; godmother is Caroline Bone; godfathers are Sid Perks and Neil Carter. |
| 1983/02/09 | William Grundy born |
| 1983/09/00 | Mark Hebden and Sarah Locke become engaged. |
| 1984/00/00 | Borsetshire NSPCC gala dinner at Grey Gables. Patron, Duke of Westminster, and President, HRH the Princess Margaret, attend. |
| 1984/00/00 | Caroline Bone has romance with Paul Chubb, pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. |
| 1984/00/00 | Clarrie Grundy goes to help her sister, Rosie (who lives in Great Yarmouth with her husband and two children) after Rosie's husband is critically injured in a traffic accident. |
| 1984/00/00 | Det. Sgt. Dave Barry buys the Police House. Becomes involved with Kathy Holland (later Perks). |
| 1984/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer is discovered drinking under age in a pub and is expelled from Cherrington Manor School. She enrols at Borchester Technical College to study English literature and environmental science. |
| 1984/00/00 | Hugo Barnaby decides to sell Nightingale Farm and gives £4,000 to Neil and Susan Carter to leave. |
| 1984/00/00 | Mark Hebden and Sarah Locke are due to marry in September but by August Mark decides to end the relationship. |
| 1984/00/00 | Mark Hebden goes to Hong Kong where he is visited by Shula Archer. |
| 1984/00/00 | Martin Lambert arrives as assistant vet in Bill Robertson's practice. He has a brief relationship with Shula until she ends it. He then turns his attention to Elizabeth Archer. He tries to rent Honeysuckle Cottage from Nelson Gabriel but eventually moves into Grange Farm. After a while he moves to a flat in Borchester. |
| 1984/00/00 | Neil and Susan Carter move into the flat at Nightingale Farm. |
| 1984/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel becomes insolvent and is helped out by his father, Walter. Nelson remodels the wine bar again but the bailiffs turn up on the opening night. Walter steps in again to help. |
| 1984/00/00 | Nigel Pargetter and Shula Archer arrested for stealing a car. Nigel, being drunk, could not find his car and drove away what he thought was Tim Beauchamp's car. In fact it belonged to a Mr Cunningham. Mark Hebden defended Shula and their relationship began. Nigel began a relationship with Elizabeth Archer. |
| 1984/00/00 | Pat Archer meets Roger Coombes at Borchester Technical College where he is a lecturer for her course in Women's Studies. They have an affair until Pat, prompted by Revd Richard Adamson, ends the relationship. |
| 1984/00/00 | Phil Archer disappointed that he has to reduce his diary herd following the introduction of milk quotas. |
| 1984/00/00 | Sid and Kathy Perks sell Rose Cottage to raise money to buy The Bull in partnership with Guy Pemberton. |
| 1984/00/00 | The Carters move into No. 1 The Green. |
| 1984/00/00 | The Grundys go into the flour producing business. Their "Huntsman" variety of wheat does not make good breadmaking flour and Clarrie uses it for flapjacks. |
| 1984/00/00 | The farm shop at Ambridge Farm is visited by a trading standards office and reports Mike Tucker for selling underweight produce due to faulty scales. |
| 1984/00/00 | Tim Beauchamp sprays the statue of Prince Albert in Borchester with gold paint. |
| 1984/02/25 | Neil Carter married |
| 1984/02/25 | Susan Carter married |
| 1984/08/08 | Emma Carter born |
| 1984/09/28 | Edward Grundy jnr born |
| 1985/00/00 | Ambridge Hall inherited by Laura Archer's niece who lived in New Zealand. |
| 1985/00/00 | Brian Aldridge and Caroline Bone meet at Hunt Ball. |
| 1985/00/00 | Following their marriage Shula and Mark Hebden move into a flat in the Old Wool Market in Borchester. |
| 1985/00/00 | Kathy Holland gets divorced and starts relationship with Det Sgt Dave Barry. |
| 1985/00/00 | Laura Archer dies. Her will was unsigned. Phil Archer advertised in New Zealand newpapers and the only response was from Judy Wilson, Laura's younger brother's granddaughter who inherits Ambridge Hall. |
| 1985/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus buys Nightingale Farm. |
| 1985/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus moves into Nightingale Farm. |
| 1985/00/00 | Pat and Tony Archer receive advice on organic farming from a Welsh farmer known as Evans the Muck. |
| 1985/00/00 | Pat and Tony Archer turn to organic farming. |
| 1985/00/00 | Phil and Jill Archer install second bathroom at Brookfield. |
| 1985/00/00 | Samantha Walton has two weeks work experience at Grange Farm as part of her course to become a nanny. She saves William from choking. |
| 1985/00/00 | Shula and Mark's reception takes place at Netherbourne Hall. The wedding photographs are taken by Patrick Lichfield, friend of Lord Netherbourne. |
| 1985/00/00 | Steve Holland arrives to ask his wife, Kathy (later Perks), to return to him. She lets him know she wants a divorce to which he agrees. |
| 1985/09/21 | Mark Hebden married |
| 1985/09/21 | Shula Hebden married |
| 1986/00/00 | Alf Grundy (Eddie's brother) turns up at Grange Farm following his release from prison. He steals William's moneybox and Eddie's car stereo. |
| 1986/00/00 | Ambridge Hall put on market for gpb 160,000 and bought by Lynda and Robert Snell. |
| 1986/00/00 | Charles and Jean Harvey go on a six-month trip to Singapore. |
| 1986/00/00 | David Archer and Sophie Barlow part. |
| 1986/00/00 | Dr Matthew Thorogood arrives. |
| 1986/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer spends the summer working as Mrs Snowy, ice cream vendor. Is in competition with Mr Snowy (Nigel Pargetter). |
| 1986/00/00 | Jennifer Aldridge designs the Home Farm holiday cottages (the "Rookeries") forgetting about the plumbing until the last minute. |
| 1986/00/00 | Kenton Archer returns for the funeral of his grandfather, Dan. |
| 1986/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus produces the morality play 'Everyman'. |
| 1986/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus represents Ambridge WI at the Albert Hall AGM. |
| 1986/00/00 | Neil Carter inherits the barn and eight acres at Willow Farm from Bill Insley. |
| 1986/00/00 | Phil Archer has to sell 55 acres of Willow Farm to pay inheritance tax following death of his father (Dan Archer). |
| 1986/00/00 | Rosemary Tarrant, Nelson Gabriel's daughter, arrives at the Wine Bar. Nelson unaware that he has a daughter. Rosemary is a police cadet. |
| 1986/00/00 | Shula and Mark Hebden moved to Glebe Cottage. Mark joins new law firm in Birmingham. The marriage begins to fail. |
| 1986/00/00 | The Snells arrive in Ambridge from Sunningdale. |
| 1986/00/00 | Tim Beauchamp is prosecuted for writing "Elizabeth Archer wears thermal vests" on wall opposite Borchester Magistrates Court. Mark Hebden defends; Tim fined £200 with £200 costs and is banned from Brookfield by Phil Archer. |
| 1986/01/00 | Mike Tucker goes bankrupt and the Tuckers lose their home, Ambridge Farm, which reverts to the Bellamy Estate. They move to The Bull then later into one of the Home Farm Cottages. |
| 1986/04/23 | Dan Archer died |
| 1986/06/00 | Caroline Bone thrown from horse and nearly run over by Eddie Grundy, outside Grange Farm. As a result Caroline meets Dr Matthew Thorogood. Caroline moves in with Matthew into Ambridge Farm. |
| 1987/00/00 | Adam Macy returns from Canada, where he had gone after his A-levels, for university interviews to read agricultural economics. |
| 1987/00/00 | Brian Aldridge meets Mandy Beesborough at Pony Club Christmas rally staged at Home Farm. |
| 1987/00/00 | Brian Aldridge starts deer farming on Home Farm. |
| 1987/00/00 | Brookfield acquires Freda, a Middle White sow, and Phil develops a soft spot for her. |
| 1987/00/00 | Clarrie Grundy inherits £5,000 and a dog, Gyp, from her father. |
| 1987/00/00 | Cyril, Bishop of Felpersham, visits Ambridge for a confirmation. He is introduced to many of the villagers including Joe Grundy. He samples some of the Grundy scrumpy and stays at the Grundys for so long that Higgs (who is driving him around the village) goes back to Grey Gables. Joe then drives the Bishop in his van to Grey Gables where the Bishop, Joe and many other villagers tuck into the feast that Jack Woolley has had prepared. |
| 1987/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer meets Robin Fairbrother (half-brother to Phil Archer's first wife, Grace). The relationship is short-lived as he decided to try to patch up his marriage. |
| 1987/00/00 | Helen Archer is bought her own pony, Comet. Pony dies a year later from acute laminitis. |
| 1987/00/00 | Joe advertises in lonely hearts column. Sandra Haimes visits Grange Farm to meet the "gentleman farmer". |
| 1987/00/00 | Kenton Archer returns to Brookfield after years abroad. |
| 1987/00/00 | Portia, one of Marjorie Antrobus's pedigree Afghan hounds goes missing. She is later found and two months later produces nine pups, all resembling Captain, Jack Woolley's dog. |
| 1987/00/00 | Ruth Pritchard arrives to work as student at Brookfield. |
| 1987/00/00 | Tree branch being cut off by David Archer falls on Jethro Larkin causing latter's death. |
| 1987/04/24 | Kathy Perks married |
| 1987/04/24 | Sid Perks married |
| 1987/06/17 | Jethro Larkin died |
| 1987/12/25 | Mrs Perkins apparently disappears leaving her family frantic with worry. She is actually babysitting for the Tuckers. |
| 1988/00/00 | Brian Aldridge takes Mandy Beesborough to the races on the day his daughter Alice is born. |
| 1988/00/00 | Caroline Bone becomes general manager of Grey Gables. |
| 1988/00/00 | David Archer has affair with Frances, a friend of Caroline Bone. |
| 1988/00/00 | David Archer made director of Ambridge Farmers Ltd. |
| 1988/00/00 | Dawn Porritt arrived at Home Farm as Alice's nanny. As a qualified nanny she wanted a contract which the Aldridge's didn't. Jack Woolley offered to mediate but when a contract was still not agreed to by the Aldridges, Dawn left. |
| 1988/00/00 | Jack Woolley has a heart attack and is given the kiss of life by Lynda Snell. Later, he is fitted with a pacemaker |
| 1988/00/00 | Kate Aldridge (11) goes to Cheltenham Ladies' College. |
| 1988/00/00 | Kenton Archer ill, rumours of AIDS, over-active thyroid diagnosed. |
| 1988/00/00 | Kenton Archer returns home for good. |
| 1988/00/00 | Nigel Pargetter inherits Lower Loxley following the death of his father. |
| 1988/00/00 | Part of Honeysuckle Cottage (the gable end wall) collapses. No-one is hurt and Walter Gabriel goes to stay with Mrs Perkins while it is repaired. He dies before he can return. |
| 1988/00/00 | Pat Archer gets contract for organic yoghourt and butter from a London delicatessen. |
| 1988/00/00 | Pat and Tony Archer decide to have a new kitchen. The Bonnetti brothers were to fit it after Mike Tucker had stripped out the old one, but they failed to turn up and they had to manage without through Christmas. |
| 1988/00/00 | Phil Archer lets Woodbine cottage to Bert and Freda Fry. |
| 1988/00/00 | Relationship between Peggy Archer and Godfrey Wendover, former Naval commander. He lives in one of the barn conversions on the Berrow Estate and he and Peggy meet when he contacts the estate office. |
| 1988/00/00 | Robert Snell's daughters from his previous marriage, Coriander (Caz) And Leonie (Len) spend Christmas with Robert and Lynda. Lynda's uneasiness is not helped by Caz's present from her mother, a drum kit. |
| 1988/00/00 | Terry Barford becomes lance corporal (Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Yorkshire). |
| 1988/00/00 | The Revd Adamson and family leave Ambridge for new parish in County Durham. |
| 1988/00/00 | The Tuckers move back to Willow Farm farmhouse as tenants of Matthew Thorogood. |
| 1988/00/00 | The sheep at Grange Farm have scab. Joe Grundy is not happy as he will have to dip them and possibly face legal action. Clarrie Grundy, however, liked Robert Savage, the man from the Ministry of Agriculture, as his deep voice made her tingle. |
| 1988/06/22 | Christopher Carter born |
| 1988/09/00 | David Archer and Ruth Pritchard engaged. |
| 1988/09/29 | Alice Aldridge born |
| 1988/12/15 | David Archer married |
| 1988/12/15 | Ruth Archer married |
| 1989/00/00 | Borchester Free School and Worcester Road Comprehensive amalgamated. |
| 1989/00/00 | Brian Aldridge suffers cerebral abscess following attack by cow with BSE. Suffers epilepsy as a result. |
| 1989/00/00 | Christening of Alice Aldridge. Joint service with Bruno Foster (b. early 1989) son of Snatch Foster, godson of Eddie Grundy. Revd Jerry Buckle insisted despite Aldridge's pleading. Alice screamed and Bruno behaved like an angel. |
| 1989/00/00 | Elaine Griffiths, a rep for a mid-Wales dairy, comes to Bridge Farm. Lynda Snell persuades her to buy from Pat and Tony Archer. |
| 1989/00/00 | Jack Woolley gives Nelson Gabriel a spaniel pup, Charlie. |
| 1989/00/00 | Joe and Eddie Grundy install a new bathroom suite in Grange Farm. |
| 1989/00/00 | Kate Aldridge (12) seen mixing with the wrong crowd, starts smoking, helps sabotage Christmas tree on village green. |
| 1989/00/00 | Kenton Archer (with help from father Phil, sister Shula and brother-in- law Mark) buys Nelson Gabriel's antique shop. Moves into flat above. |
| 1989/00/00 | Kenton Archer is sacked from investment firm following investigation by FIMBRA. |
| 1989/00/00 | Lilian Bellamy sells the Bellamy Estate, retaining only Blossom Hill Cottage. |
| 1989/00/00 | Lynda Snell bought two goats while at the Royal Show. These are Anglo- Nubian goats and she named them Persephone and Demeter. Chaos reigned when they gave birth to kids and eventually Robert took them to Nigel Pargetter's Pet's Corner at Lower Loxley. |
| 1989/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus and Ruth Archer win a talent competition at the Ambridge spring festival singing a Flanagan and Allen song 'Nice People with Nice Manners'. |
| 1989/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel inherits Honeysuckle Cottage from his father. He puts it up for auction but it does not make its reserve place. He decides to keep it to live in himself and as a base for his daughter Rosemary Tarrant. |
| 1989/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel sells antiques shop to Kenton Archer for the cash to renew the lease on the Wine Bar. |
| 1989/00/00 | Pat Archer receives invitation to the Women of the Year lunch. |
| 1989/00/00 | Pat and Tony Archer's have a new kitchen installed but one of the workers, Mr O'Hara, wrecks the electricity system. Robert Snell, Bert Fry and Brian Aldridge team up to put things right. |
| 1989/00/00 | Revd Jerry Buckle invites Clive Horrobin and Sharon Richards to live at the vicarage. |
| 1989/00/00 | Robert Snell makes an impassioned speech opposing the proposed Borchester by-pass. |
| 1989/00/00 | Romance between Peggy Archer and Godfrey Wendover comes to an end. Godfrey does not share Peggy's enthusiasm for animals, especially Peggy's cat, Sammy. |
| 1989/00/00 | Steve Manson, foreman at Home Farm, moves to Norfolk to take over his recently deceased father-in-law's market garden. At the time Brian Aldridge is in hospital recovering from an accident and Jennifer is managing the farm on her own. |
| 1989/00/00 | Terry Barford returns to Ambridge having left the army. |
| 1989/00/00 | Terry Wogan comes to Grey Gables golf course for a celebrity match. He is greeted by Pru Forrest with words of welcome and a pot of damson jam. Jack Woolley though him worthy of the Royal Garden suite. |
| 1989/00/00 | The Grundys try an insurance deception, but Miss Jackson, from Borsetshire Farm Insurance sees through the scheme and advises them to adjust their claims. |
| 1989/00/00 | William Grundy releases the turkey which has been selected for the family's Christmas dinner. William has christened the bird Clint. The family make do with a frozen turkey. |
| 1989/07/07 | Nigel Pargetter opens Lower Loxley Hall to the public, offering tours of the house and cream teas. |
| 1989/10/26 | Kylie Richards born |
| 1990/00/00 | Adam Macy graduates from Newcastle University. Involved in agriculture in the third world. |
| 1990/00/00 | Bungalow built for David and Ruth Archer. |
| 1990/00/00 | Cameron Fraser buys the Estate. |
| 1990/00/00 | Carol and John Tregorran leave Ambridge to live in Bristol. |
| 1990/00/00 | Caroline Bone meets Cameron Fraser, new owner of the estate. |
| 1990/00/00 | Caroline Bone's horse, Ivor, has to be put down. She buys a new horse, Rustic Oak, nicknamed Ippy, a dark bay gelding. |
| 1990/00/00 | Det Sgt Dave Barry gets transfer back to his home town of St Albans. |
| 1990/00/00 | Det. Sgt. Dave Barry leaves for St Albans. |
| 1990/00/00 | Eddie Grundy and Snatch Foster play practical joke on Martha Woodford by appearing as ghosts at Martha's cottage, which she feared was inhabited by the ghost of Florrie Hoskins. Kate Aldridge and William Grundy followed their example at Hallowe'en but were caught by Martha who then terrified them, over hot drinks and homemade cake, by declaring her ability to commune with real ghosts. |
| 1990/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer moves to Birmingham as reporter with Birmingham Evening News. |
| 1990/00/00 | Jill Archer starts farm holiday business. |
| 1990/00/00 | Jill Archer starts running farmhouse holidays at Brookfield. |
| 1990/00/00 | John Archer goes to Brymore School. Peggy Archer contibutes to his school fees, partly to get him away from Sharon Richards. |
| 1990/00/00 | Kathy Perks and Dave Barry have an affair. |
| 1990/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus plays 'Lady Bracknell'. |
| 1990/00/00 | Martha Woodford is upset by Jennifer Aldridge's recounting of a local tragedy. A previous occupant of Martha's cottage, Florrie Hoskins, drowns herself in the village pond after discovering she is pregnant. Martha is afraid of being haunted by Florrie's ghost and wants an exorcism. Jennifer solves the problem by claiming the cottage was one of the same name in Lower Loxley. |
| 1990/00/00 | Norman Bates is employed by Brian Aldridge as chauffeur. |
| 1990/00/00 | Portia, one of Marjorie Antrobus's pedigree Afghan hounds, takes up residence on Ruth Pritchard's bed at Nightingale Farm, together with her litter of four pups. Ruth has to sleep on the floor. The runt of the litter has a bad leg and Lynda Snell takes pity on him, takes home and names him Hermes. |
| 1990/00/00 | Revd Jerry Buckle goes back to Mozambique on a missionary trip and decides to stay. Audrey Crowther, comes to stay with her friend Marjorie Antrobus. Makes eyes at Jack Woolley to Peggy Archer's (unnecessary) concern. |
| 1990/00/00 | Ruth Archer, doing work experience at Home Farm, discovers the new farm foreman, Bill Knowles, is cheating Brian Aldridge. Brian sacks him. |
| 1990/00/00 | Shula Hebden suffers an ectopic pregnancy. |
| 1990/00/00 | The clock at St Stephen's needs to be repaired. Both Jack Woolley and Cameron Fraser want the honour of paying for it. When the clock was repaired, its chime is heard for the first time in years. When Bert Fry wound it up, the weights crashed through the floor, nearly killing William Grundy. |
| 1990/09/30 | Kate Aldridge runs away on her 13th birthday. Expelled from Cheltenham Ladies' College. Enrolled in Borchester Green school. |
| 1990/10/00 | Jack Woolley proposes to Peggy Archer. Tony and Jennifer are concerned about how their mother's remarriage will affect them. |
| 1991/00/00 | Aldridge family in family therapy because of Kate's behaviour |
| 1991/00/00 | BBC Radio One holds its disc jockey's Christmas lunch at Grey Gables. John Peel hears Eddie Grundy's impressions of Radio One disc jockeys in Bert Fry's production of Alladin and invites the Grundys to the lunch. Eddie gives him a couple of demo tapes but these are returned some weeks later by the BBC as not suitable. |
| 1991/00/00 | Cameron Fraser disappears, along with Caroline Bone's £6,000 which he had invested for her (although she got most of it back). |
| 1991/00/00 | Debbie Aldridge drops out of university (Essex, French and English) following affair with her tutor. Returns home. |
| 1991/00/00 | Dr Matthew Thorogood decides to join his aunt's general practice in Somerset. He sells Willow Farm farmhouse to Mike and Betty Tucker and the land to Phil Archer. |
| 1991/00/00 | Eddie Grundy tracks down Jolene Rogers to invite her to his fortieth birthday. Clarrie is suspicious but Eddie remains loyal to her. |
| 1991/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer returns to Brookfield from Birmingham suffering from glandular fever. |
| 1991/00/00 | Geoff Williams is the farm manager on the Berrow Estate. The Estate is prosecuted in the health and safety case of Mike Tucker's accident. |
| 1991/00/00 | Graham Collard made redundant from Brookfield to make room for Ruth. He and his family had to move from Rickyard Cottage. He found a new job at Hollerton farm. |
| 1991/00/00 | Jack and Peggy Woolley move into The Lodge following their marriage. |
| 1991/00/00 | Joe Grundy fined £2,000 with £200 costs for failing to dip his sheep - instead he used a watering can to spray them. (The law changed the following year.) |
| 1991/00/00 | Julia Pargetter brings Asty, who she met abroad, to Lower Loxley to redesign her suite. Nelson Gabriel warns Julia that Asty is part of an antiques ring |
| 1991/00/00 | Kate Aldridge cautioned by police for riding in car stolen by boyfriend Warren. |
| 1991/00/00 | Kate Aldridge, Helen Archer, Brenda Tucker and William Grundy break into Blossom Hill Cottage. Discover letters dating back to WWII from Conn Kortchmar (American soldier) to Peggy (Archer) Woolley. Forged letter from Peggy to Conn whereupon latter turns up to Peggy's embarrassment. |
| 1991/00/00 | Kathy Perks gets a Valentine present, apparently from Dave Barry. Sid storms out and disappears for six weeks. On his return, in front of the regulars, he orders Kathy out of The Bull. She goes to stay at Bridge Farm and gets a job at Grey Gables. They are later reconciled when they become involved in helping the Tuckers who are separated because of Mike's breakdown. |
| 1991/00/00 | Mike Tucker loses the opportunity to rent land from Jim Ascott to raise sheep when Ascott decides on set-aside instead. Mike suffers a breakdown and attempts to set fire to Ascott's barn. He is spotted by Eddie Grundy who persuades him to hand over the petrol and matches. |
| 1991/00/00 | Mike Tucker loses the sight in one eye as a result of a farming accident: a tractor was started up before the pickup hitch to the trailer was secured and the hydraulic link pipe snapped and one end caught Mike in the face. As a result Mike's retina had become detached. |
| 1991/00/00 | Mrs Perkins dies. |
| 1991/00/00 | Nell, formerly Dan Archer's sheepdog, now Phil Archer's, found dead in a snare illegally set by Brian Aldridge's keeper. |
| 1991/00/00 | Nelson Gabriel remodels the wine bar again, with help from Kenton Archer and Caroline Bone, in gentleman's club style. |
| 1991/00/00 | Peggy Woolly resigns from job at estate office - relieved to escape Cameron Fraser's rudeness. |
| 1991/00/00 | Phil Archer has hip replacement |
| 1991/00/00 | Premium bond win in the name of Susan Grundy (Joe's late wife). Joe tries to persuade Clarrie to open a building society in the name of S. Grundy but Clarrie gets scared and the cheque is returned to the authorities. |
| 1991/00/00 | Pru Forrest has a stroke. |
| 1991/00/00 | Revd Robin Stokes arrives as non-stipendiary minister for the parishes of Ambridge, Penny Hassett and Edgeley. He is also a full-time vet. He is divorced and has two sons. |
| 1991/00/00 | Rival productions of "Aladdin" are produced in Ambridge. Eddie Grundy plays "Wishee Washee" in both, at the same time. |
| 1991/00/00 | Roger Travers-Macy returns. Has affair with ex-wife Jennifer Aldridge. |
| 1991/00/00 | Roger Travers-Macy visits Ambridge for the 21st birthday of his daughter, Debbie Aldridge. He buys her a new car. He and Jennifer become involved again for a while. |
| 1991/00/00 | Sharon Richards moves into a council house with her daughter Kylie. |
| 1991/00/00 | Sharon Richards starts works on the twilight shift at the canning factory. When she discovers the men are paid more than the women she goes to Usha Gupta who writes to the factory. Negotiations over pay take place but Sharon is one of several workers laid off when seasonal work dried up. |
| 1991/00/00 | Simon Gerrard, the lecturer with whom Debbie Aldridge had an affair whilst at university, turns up. Brian Aldridge throws him out of Home Farm. |
| 1991/00/00 | The Tuckers split up, Betty taking the children and moving to The Bull. Reconciliation occurs on Christmas Day after Kathy Perks finds Mike alone and weeping - she summons Betty who persuades Mike to seek medical help. |
| 1991/00/00 | Thorkhil Jensen comes to work at Bridge Farm for six months. He spends most of his time with Sharon Richards. He returns to Denmark alone despite Sharon's suggestions that she go with him. |
| 1991/00/00 | Usha Gupta acts for the employees of Sir Sidney Goodman. He ensures that her firm looses a large contract with one of his friends. |
| 1991/00/00 | Usha Gupta arrives as Mark Hedben's new partner. |
| 1991/00/00 | William Grundy gets locked into Blossom Hill Cottage by Kate Aldridge. Released by Helen Archer |
| 1991/01/01 | Jack Woolley married to Peggy Archer |
| 1991/02/14 | Sid Perks goes missing. |
| 1991/06/00 | Ruth Archer passes final exams with flying colours |
| 1991/08/00 | Eddie Grundy and Baggy revealed as perpetrators of the corn circle in a Grange Farm field, by Elizabeth Archer. Captain, Jack Woolley's beloved dog, dies whilst Jack and Peggy are on their honeymoon |
| 1991/12/00 | Jean-Paul disappears from Grey Gables, mistakenly thinking that Peggy Woolley has accused him of stealing wine. He is later found to be working at Nelson Gabriel's wine bar. When Caroline Bone advertises for a new chef Jean-Paul returns. |
| 1992/00/00 | A new lavatory is installed in St Stephen's and the work revealed that the church foundations were older than previously thought. Carbon dating show the floor timbers to be Saxon, dating between AD 540 and AD 650. The archaeologists decide not to investigate further for fear of damage. |
| 1992/00/00 | Alice Aldridge (4) to hospital with gash to head. Prompts reconciliation of her parents. |
| 1992/00/00 | Alice Aldridge starts nursery school. |
| 1992/00/00 | Barry Simmonds goes to work for Tony Archer. He is a good cricketer and soon joins the Ambridge team. |
| 1992/00/00 | Brian Aldridge creates artificial lake for trout fishing and off-the-road riding course. |
| 1992/00/00 | Brian Aldridge plans expanding leisure potential of estate. |
| 1992/00/00 | Cameron Fraser abandons Elizabeth Archer in an motorway cafe. |
| 1992/00/00 | Clint and Jason (builders), to the horror of villagers, are seen "bullfighting" with bones found in the churchyard when they were digging a trench for a new lavatory. Jason, who has an interest in archaeology, correctly identifies the bones as animal. |
| 1992/00/00 | Conn Kortchmar arrives from America as a result of a letter he had received purportedly from Peggy Woolley, his wartime sweetheart. The letter had in fact been forged by Kate Aldridge. Embarrassment ensued but Conn handled the situation well and he and Peggy enjoyed time reminiscing. Conn goes off to Bristol to see his son and new granddaughter but returns and takes Peggy off on a series of nostalgia trips. Conn moves in with Marjorie Antrobus at Nightingale Farm as a paying guest. Eventually Jack tells Conn off after Peggy has received flowers purportedly from him (they are actually from Kate as an apology). Conn then leaves leaving his Zippo lighter behind as a present for Peggy. |
| 1992/00/00 | Dr Richard Locke arrives. |
| 1992/00/00 | Eddie Grundy plays "Mac the Sheep Stealer" in the nativity play. |
| 1992/00/00 | Elizabeth Archer has an abortion. The father is Cameron Fraser. |
| 1992/00/00 | Farm shop at Bridge Farm opens. |
| 1992/00/00 | Freda, Phil Archer's pet pig, is sent to market. Phil keeps two of her last piglets, called Milly and Molly. |
| 1992/00/00 | John Archer becomes involved with Holly, partly to deflect his parents' attention away from his relationship with Sharon Richards. The relationship cools when Holly starts her A- levels the following year. |
| 1992/00/00 | Marjorie Antrobus produces wartime revue 'Tickety Boo'. |
| 1992/00/00 | Mike Tucker is given work at Hollowtree and a share in Neil's egg business and he restarts his milk round. |
| 1992/00/00 | Mike Tucker receives gbp 33,000 compensation for the loss of sight in one eye as a result of the farming accident. |
| 1992/00/00 | Nigel Pargetter and Elizabeth Archer (as marketing manager) launch a corporate open day at Lower Loxley Hall. |
| 1992/00/00 | Pat and Tony Archer turn down offer of freehold of Bridge Farm at gbp 160,000. |
| 1992/00/00 | Red House Farm becomes vacant on the retirement of Len Roberts, the tenant. Cameron Fraser offers it to Phil and David Archer on a five year lease. Fraser then agrees to sell it to Phil but the agreement becomes void when Fraser disappears |
| 1992/01/01 | Phil and Jill Archer lie in bed watching "Casablanca", listening to bell of St Stephen's ring in the New Year and pretend to be out when Mark and Shula call. |
| 1992/10/00 | Squatters (Lisa, Craig and baby Scott) take up residence in Rickyard Cottage, Brookfield. David Archer favours direct action but Jill becomes sympathetic to them. Lisa finds work at Bridge Farm and Jill persuades Phil to allow them to be low-rent tenants. They suddenly leave in the New Year because Craig has lost his job as a farm labourer and they can't afford the rent. |
| 1993/00/00 | A peacock appears in the garden of The Bull. Sid Perks names him Eccles. Eccles disappears and Sid and Kathy Perk get three more from Lower Loxley. They are called Elvis, Marilyn and Madonna. These come to a sad end: two found in the village pond, one run over. Eccles subsequently reappears. |
| 1993/00/00 | Ambridge Farmers Ltd buy 7 acres of Willow Farm. (Brookfield now a mixed farm of 469 acres). |
| 1993/00/00 | Clive Horrobin imprisoned for leading the armed raid on the village post office and escaping from remand. Terrorizes his sister Susan Carter to help him. |
| 1993/00/00 | Cyril, Bishop of Birmingham, and Caroline Bone talk. He impresses here with enlightened opinions. He helps her to decide she has the chance of happiness with Revd Robin Stokes. Caroline and Robin become engaged a few weeks later. |
| 1993/00/00 | Delegation from Meyruelle arrives; includes Marie-Claire Beguet. |
| 1993/00/00 | Gustave Touvier, Mayor of Meyruelle, arrives to visit. He speaks no English but makes himself understood by pinching Lynda Snell's bottom and ogling Clarrie Grundy. |
| 1993/00/00 | Guy Pemberton buys the Berrow Estate. |
| 1993/00/00 | Lynda Snell is unable to travel for the initial visit to Ambridge's twinned town, Meyruelle, because she has ringworm. |
| 1993/00/00 | Phil and Jill Archer go to Sydney, Australia, for the wedding of Judy Wilson, Laura Archer's great-niece. |
| 1993/00/00 | Raid on farm shop - Bruno Wills is one of the raiders. Evaded arrest; would not admit guilt; was eventually positively identified and convicted. |
| 1993/00/00 | Raid on village shop. |
| 1993/00/00 | Revd Robin Stokes and Caroline Bone announce their engagement. |
| 1993/00/00 | Sid and Kathy Perks discuss purchase of The Bull with Shires Breweries. |
| 1993/00/00 | Susan Carter imprisoned for six months for assisting her convict brother Clive. While she is away, Maureen Travis gets friendly with Neil Carter but he manages to keep her at bay. |
| 1993/00/00 | Susan Carter is sent to prison for six months for sheltering her brother, Clive Horrobin who had escaped while on remand following the raid on the farm shop. |
| 1993/00/00 | The redecorating of the village hall kitchen is co-ordinated over three days by Anneka Rice. |
| 1993/02/17 | Pip Archer born |
| 1993/03/00 | Ippy, Caroline Bone's horse, is stolen from Grey Gables and is never found. |
| 1993/07/22 | Mike and Betty Tucker buy Willow Farm which receives Soil Association classification as an organic market garden. |
| 1993/12/00 | Competition between Eddie Grundy (turkeys) and John Archer (conservation grade pork). |
| 1994/00/00 | A week after Mark dies, Shula Hebden discovers she is pregnant. |
| 1994/00/00 | Caroline Bone injured when thrown from horse. Goes into coma. |
| 1994/00/00 | Debbie Aldridge has relationship with Steve Oakley, contractor helping out with harvest. |
| 1994/00/00 | Ellen Rogers, Julia Pargetter's sister arrives for the wedding of Nigel Pargetter and Elizabeth Archer. She is a widow who owns a club in Spain where she lives. |
| 1994/00/00 | Julia Pargetter's sister, Ellen, reveals that Julia's real name is Joan; her father was a greengrocer and Julia took a stage name for her career as a singer and dancer in popular wartime revues. |
| 1994/00/00 | Lilian Bellamy sells Blossom Hill Cottage to Usha Gupta. |
| 1994/00/00 | Lower Loxley holds the local Point-to-Point race. |
| 1994/00/00 | Mice become a problem in St Stephen's, eating through the leather and felt organ stops so the organ could not be played. Nigel Pargetter's sponsored parachute jump and Tom Forrest's sponsored diet help raise the gbp 2,000 needed for repairs. |
| 1994/00/00 | Roger Travers-Macy returns to Ambridge for a short while to see his daughter, Debbie Aldridge, after the accident which killed Mark Hebden. He wants to help Debbie financially with her plans to go into partnership with Nelson Gabriel but he is unable to do so. |
| 1994/00/00 | Steve Oakley comes to work at Home Farm on the harvest. |
| 1994/00/00 | Titcombe creates a herb garden for Julia Pargetter. |
| 1994/00/00 | William Grundy sets up menagerie of wounded and orphaned animals at Grange Farm and charges other children to view them. |
| 1994/02/00 | Susan Carter absconds from prison to attend Mark Hebden's funeral. She has a further ten days added to her sentence. |
| 1994/02/17 | Mark Hebden died |
| 1994/08/00 | Kate Aldridge's GCSE results were poor. Kate runs away the next day.. |
| 1994/09/15 | Ambridge is twinned with Meyruelle, a small town in the Languedoc Roussillon. |
| 1994/09/29 | Elizabeth Pargetter married |
| 1994/09/29 | Nigel Pargetter married |