Archers thread #185: Some farming would be nice. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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Over to you!

It would be totally out of character for Peggy to do that

maybe Joy is a conwoman who tricks old people out of their fortune and was playing the long game

Didn't Peggy give some money to the re-wilding project? Maybe she's given them a big legacy.

I'm wondering if, after the way Peggy wanted a window dedicated to Tom & Natasha's children, she will leave most of her money to them with only small bequests to the rest of her family. "I leave Alice my Waterford crystal vase" type bequests.

oh goodness NO MORE ABOUT THE WINDOW!

So many possibilities with Peggy's will (and none of them involving Joy!) Let joy be unconfined (and let Joy herself be confined somewhere so we don't have to hear from her for a while). Doesn’t Natasha habitually drop Welsh terms of endearment into her conversations with Tom, or when she’s on the phone to her parents? Yes, but last night sounded more like an instruction than a careless cariad.

I hope we hear from all the grandchildren this week speculating on how they are going to spend their windfall…and then find there is nothing left.

Peggy’s wealth during her final years seemed disproportionate to what she had for most of her life. She was presented as having the equivalent wealth of the Queen Mother at least with money for benevolent gestures such as paying Christine’s luxury care home fees and setting up a charitable trust. What year was the rewilding trust set up actually? It feels like it was less than seven years ago in which case tapered IHT at the very least would be due.

Did Joy ever actually meet Peggy?

I don't know about charitable trusts pre-mortem, but bequests to charity in a will can bring an estate below the IHT threshold. If an estate is worth £500k and of that £200k is left to charity, IHT won't be due on the remaining £300k nor on the original £500k.

Must have done. We've been discussing some details on the spoilers thread (not about to break the Golden Rule, never fear!) and Asking says that Peggy only went into The Laurels in December 2023. I thought it was much longer ago than that. Joy has been around for a few years.

Inheritance - a favourite subject of mine! I hope they really give us something to get their teeth into.

Peggy would have had very little money of her own until she sold The Bull to Sid and Kathy. (The silent investor then was Guy Pemberton, I think - he stepped in to make sure that Sid and Kathy could buy it, and then died, so that share eventually passed to Caroline, who sold it to Lilian, I assume, as she also wanted it to stay in the hands of the landlords - Sid and Jolene? Jolene and Kenton? Can't remember.) Her other significant asset was Blossom Hill Cottage, which she sold to Usha a long time ago.

However, she then married Jack Woolley and inherited a large chunk of his estate. (His daughter Hazel got the rest.) He owned Grey Gables, the Borchester Echo (worth something then, defunct or worthless now, I suspect) and the Community Shop with flat above. Also Keeper's Cottage and April Cottage. There may well have been other investments and properties. The Woolleys had been living together in The Lodge, which was part of the Grey Gables estate, until Jack went into The Laurels, which must have cost a lot, as he needed dementia care for several years. Peggy has now sold The Lodge to unknown people. Asking says she gave half a million to the rewilding scheme. She coughed up a bit for Christine's fees at The Laurels until Christine's son stepped in and took over responsibility.

Up to now the SWs have treated Peggy's inheritance as a bottomless money pit. It would be entirely predictable if they now decided it's all gone on The Laurels and rewilding.

As for who would inherit - Peggy's direct descendants are:

Jennifer's children - Adam, Debbie, Kate, Alice. Would she leave anything to Ruairi? Next generation down: Zander, Phoebe, Noluthando, Sipho, Martha
Lilian, her son James and grandson Mungo
Tony, John's son Johnnie, Helen, Henry, Jack, Tom, Nova, Seren

I can't believe Peggy will leave anything to Hazel, but who knows? She was her stepmother and Hazel was disgruntled not to get Jack's entire estate.

Bring on the infighting!

Peggy set up the Ambridge Conservation Trust in June 2019. It awarded her great-granddaughter, Phoebe, £500,000 in September 2019 for Rewilding Ambridge. Once that money ran out, they have/had to seek other investors/grants.

As for knowing what's in the will, my dim memory is that when Peggy made a new will after Tony had his heart attack, she made it plain she was going to leave money to her children instead of or as well as to her grandchildren. Previously she was going to skip over her children and Tony was badly upset by that. So they may have been told what was in the will, in detail.

My parents' situation is/was extremely simply by comparison and my brother and I knew what was in the will for about 20 years before my Dad died, because they told us. No surprises there at all. But we don't live in Ambridge or the world of the super-rich!

Did anyone listen to Victory at Ambridge? It was nonsense, but I did enjoy the Jazzer actor trying very hard not to sound Scottish.

I'm hoping that Tony spends all his inheritance on a passivhaus, leaving nothing for Tom etc.

I'm not sure Joy and Peggy had met.

Joy arrived in Ambridge in August 2019 (we probably have cast lists buried in the old "threads which shan't be named"). My memories of her were centred around the shop, Beechwood, with Ben and the Parish Council (oh those halcyon days when she wasn't in every episode).

Within a few months, the country went into lockdown everywhere except Ambridge. Quite a few of the cast couldn't cope with remote recording so the action swerved around them. After that I think Peggy didn't really get involved in the big scenes. I suppose the SWs would argue that Peggy was a regular in the village shop, off mike, or perhaps they chatted at Jenny's funeral.

You just know there is going to be a huge will related argument!! Having gone (am going) through one it’s really painful!!

I'm very sorry to hear that, @hopeishere.

Surely everything goes to Lillian and Tony and Jenny's 4 children (is per stirpes the term?).

I enjoyed that chat between Natasha and Tom. They sound like an actual couple.

I'm also hoping they spend their inheritance in anticipation ... and get nowt!

Yes. Joy first spoke on 8th September, 2019, and spent the evening of 17th September, 2019 sitting with Peggy so Kate could go out with Jakob.

I decided to listen to some Emma Freud podcasts whilst getting some work done today; I should probably listen to a few more (there are 31 of the things now).

11 April's one, had David Archer and Charlotte Smith (Farming Today) on as well as "Dave the Meat" (a former abattoir owner and their storyline advisor). He was saying that an abattoir of the sort the SW's chose would typically employ about 500 staff! I could almost hear his eyes rolling when they mentioned the likelihood of a vegan wanting to work there; activist or not. Sensibly they didn't touch on the plausibility of Rochelle and her cult's 'protest'.

The podcast also touched on the historic Brookfield succession rows - with 'David' saying that Brookfield farm is now worth about £7 million.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
He [Jack] owned Grey Gables, the Borchester Echo (worth something then, defunct or worthless now, I suspect) and the Community Shop with flat above. Also Keeper's Cottage and April Cottage.

Well before he died, even before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Jack had sold Grey Gables to Caroline and Oliver, the Borchester Echo to an anonymous consortium and Jaxx Caff to Jim Lloyd and someone whose name I forget, all at Peggy's behest. And Kathy had bought April Cottage after her divorce from Sid, in summer 2001.

So all that Hazel inherited in the way of property was Keeper's Cottage and the Village Shop, instead of the expected Grey Gables and all the rest of it. She was mightily put out about it.

Goodness that woman got her feet under the table with frightening speed! We should have seen the writing on the wall then.

That was serving Peggy right for claiming to Jakob that Kate was her carer and couldn't go out in the evenings because Peggy needed her to be there. Joy was the innocent victim!

Oh I don’t know - being confined with joy must be pretty hellish

Thanks, I didn't remember the timescales around what was sold when, but my point was that Jack was a very wealthy man indeed and a substantial chunk of his estate passed to Peggy, with the rest going to Hazel.

I wasn't listening when Jack first came to Ambridge, but I believe he was well up in years then and already wealthy from his first career as some sort of businessman in the Birmingham area. The impression I have was that buying Grey Gables was a semi-retirement project.

It seems so many characters family wealth is being downgraded in the writing - Justin, Brian, possibly Peggy/her inheritance. Who is left? Elizabeth tells us lower loxley has no money (although that may be relative) and I can’t see Vince leaving his millions to the village. Oliver might have a couple of quid but no involved recipient. Surely a lot of the dynamics of the village will be lost if it exists on two tiers of middling wealth and the Grundies… unless Peggy leaves it all to Emma, Oliver leaves it all to Clarrie and Beth marries George and Freddie marries Mia, and the Grundies all become King of the Castle.