When listeners visited Ambridge for first time

>> LISTENERS who tuned their wirelesses to the BBC Midlands' Home Service this week in 1950 heard the first of five pilot programmes for a new series telling "an everyday story of countryfolk".

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Only people in the north of Gloucestershire were able to pick up the broadcast, as the signal from Daventry wasn't powerful enough to reach all parts of the county.

Each of the 15 minute shows was scripted by Godfrey Baseley, the farming producer for BBC Midlands, who lived in Corse Lawn, a few miles from Tewkesbury, in a house named, appropriately, Ambridge.

Nobody knew it at the time, but the format he'd struck upon was destined to become the longest running soap drama in the world.

Interviewed by the Gloucester Journal in 1969, Godfrey Baseley explained how the Archers came to be aired. "The creation of the Archers attempted to do two things" he said. "To make the material more acceptable to the whole farming family and to help the farmer to be better understood by the masses in towns".

Mr Baseley also pointed out that in his imagination, Borsetshire nestled on the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.