Rippingale and The Archers

The village of Rippingale has a long standing claim for its connection with the long-running BBC radio series The Archers which began way back in 1950 as an everyday story of country folk and is now the world’s longest running soap opera with five million listeners every weekday.

The series is based on Ambridge in the fictional county of Borsetshire, somewhere in the Midlands, and several places claim to be the inspiration for the village and its public house known as the Bull, but Rippingale, just off the main A15 five miles north of Bourne, has pursued its claim with a coveted zeal.

But in 2013, the Daily Mail gave prominence to a story under a headline announcing “The battle of Ambridge” (August 23rd) in which it reported that Rippingale was at loggerheads with Inkberrow in Worcestershire which has an Old Bull Inn and claims that the radio series was modelled on their village and their public house.

Inkberrow would seem to be the more favoured candidate because not only did Godfrey Baseley, creator of The Archers, live nearby but the BBC has also used the village in its publicity shots for the Radio Four programme. Rippingale, however, also has a claim, because the series was suggested to Mr Baseley by local farmer and seed specialist Henry Burtt when they met in 1946 while making a farming programme in the area and from this meeting, the idea for the programme developed.

None of this seems to be in any doubt although residents insist that Mr Baseley was so taken with the suggestion that “he went back to Rippingale to have a proper tour and would have visited the Bull Inn”, all of which gave him inspiration for the programme we know today.

Jim Latham has researched Rippingale's claim to be the inspiration for the popular BBC radio serial The Archers which is now says is unassailable and he has documentary evidence to prove it.

According to local resident Jim Latham, who has studied the connection in some detail, it is now accepted that Inkeberrow is the modern day Ambridge but that Rippingale was its birthplace where the idea, original scripts and characters were conceived and born. "With my colleague John Warman, I have gathered historical documentary proof, not just that Rippingale is Ambridge, but that the central characters in the radio drama were based on real life locals", he said. "The BBC choose Inkberrow years after The Archers started and became so popular that national newspapers were desperate for photos of the cast in farm settings and as Inkberrow was not so far from the recording studios in Birmingham and also the home of Godfrey Baseley, it became Ambridge."

Mr Latham said that in 1946, long before the programme began, Baseley, then a young radio producer, visited Rippingale to make a half an hour programme called Farm Visit. No recording of the programme survives but he has a copy of the transcript and the last two pages carry interviews between Baseley, local farmer Henry Burtt and his son Stephen. "They show without any doubt that a farming drama was in Burtt's mind", he said, "and that the eventual main character of Dan Archer and his son Phil were based on Burtt and his son and what they talked about became plot lines for early editions of the programme."

Two years later, the BBC organised a conference at the Town Hall in Birmingham to find out why more farmers were not listening to the radio. It went on all day until a man at the back of the hall stood up and said: "What we want is a farming Dick Barton" and sat down amid loud laughter. That man was Henry Burtt and he had referred to Dick Barton, Special Agent, a cliff-hanging adventure serial then being broadcast at a popular evening slot on BBC radio, becoming the most popular programme of its day with more than 27 million listeners.

Intrigued, Baseley returned to Rippingale to discuss the idea further and, as he describes in his autobiography, toured the village as Burtt talked about the hundreds of people who depended on his crops and how weather or disease could be the difference between success or failure. "That was the moment the idea for The Archers finally clicked in Baseley's mind", said Mr Latham.

No one is doubting Mr Latham's account but it does omit one fact, that Mr Burtt did not live at Rippingale. He came from Dowsby, having occupied the old hall there since 1929. He may have entertained Godfrey Baseley when they discussed the show but there appears to be no evidence that he took him to the Bull at Rippingale and as there are several other villages with attractive hostelries close by, it could have been any one of them.

If they had considered the prospect of a three mile drive to Rippingale by car then they may well have decided to go to Bourne instead, a more likely choice for the occasion because The Bull in the market place [the Burghley Arms since 1955] was also a very popular inn at that time which had a most welcoming social atmosphere and also served a very good lunch.

This would have provided an even better opportunity to learn about the locality because this hostelry was then a favoured meeting place for farmers, businessmen and country folk, particularly on market days, discussing the very issues that have since occupied the plot lines of this popular radio series, and would also have been well known to Henry Burtt because many of the local agricultural organisations also used it for their regular meetings and annual dinners.

So it seems that even Rippingale’s claim to fame is based on speculation and the fact that it has a hostelry called The Bull, one of the most popular pub names in England. In fact, there are thousands of them and there was even one here in Bourne at that time [now the Burghley Arms] and so there is a good chance that they might have gone there which would also justify yet another claim for the honour of being in on the birth of The Archers, especially as this particular pub was always full of farmers and country folk and so would have been well known to Henry Burtt.

However, Rippingale has been so active in its claim that few will now contest it. In fact, the village has become so deeply immersed in its association with the radio programme that in 2013 an Archers Day was held at The Bull on November 23rd with a special Archers' lunch comprising all the dishes on the menu with a strong link to the fictional story lines, an exhibition and an illustrated presentation by Jim Latham including video clips of an interview with Norman Painting, the actor who played Phil Archer for nearly 60 years, telling fascinating stories of anecdotes from behind the scenes. The Archers connection with Rippingale, therefore, seems to be here to stay.

WRITTEN NOVEMBER 2013

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