June Spencer, who played matriarch Peggy Woolley in BBC Radio 4’s long-running drama The Archers from 1951 until her retirement in 2022, has died at the age of 105.
Spencer was one of the programme’s original cast members, and the show’s current editor Jeremy Howe said working with her “was like working with a legend”.
He added: “June’s Peggy Woolley was and always will be the Queen of Ambridge, and with her death The Archers has lost its link with the birth of the show over 70 years ago. It is a humbling moment for us all.”
A family statement said she died peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of Friday.
Peggy Woolley, formerly Archer, was often viewed as a traditionalist, conservative character in the soap opera charting the ups and downs of life in fictional village of Ambridge.
Paying tribute, Radio 4 controller Mohit Bakaya said: “June Spencer has been a longstanding presence and companion for Radio 4 listeners during her exceptional run on The Archers.
“Many have grown up with June as Peggy and listened as she journeyed through life’s many chapters, with all of its ups and downs. In her later years, her portrayal of a devoted wife caring for a husband with dementia, including their very moving final goodbye, was deeply poignant and powerful radio.
“We send all our love and condolences to June’s family and the many people whose lives she touched.”
Howe said working with the actress had been “one of the great privileges of my time at the BBC”.
“June Spencer wasn’t just a brilliant Peggy Woolley, the ultimate matriarch of Ambridge, but a brilliant actress,” he said.
“I only ever worked with her in radio, but her technique, her precision, her delivery were flawless.
“One of the cast once remarked that in all her time in the show he had only ever heard her fluff her lines the once.
“She was an actress who revelled in her craft, someone who could score a bullseye with a gently insulting cough as if it were a bon mot from Oscar Wilde.
“She was also a great company member – funny, sharp, warm, never gossipy, but with wonderful stories of the early days of radio drama, self deprecating and a great companion.”
Spencer’s family said they wanted to “pay particular tribute and thanks to the staff team at Liberham Lodge, who so lovingly cared for her in the last two years”.
Speaking in 2019 as the show’s only original cast member, Spencer said: “I had no idea I’d be ever be 100 for a start, let alone still working!
“It’s been marvellous, I hope I can keep on doing it for a bit, and perhaps set an example to older people who have just given up,” she said.
Three years later, when she did decide it was time to leave the show, she said: “In 1950 I helped to plant an acorn. It took root and in January 1951 it was planted out and called The Archers.”
She added that “over the years it has thrived and become a splendid great tree with many branches. But now this old branch, known as Peggy, has become weak and unsafe so I decided it was high time she ‘boughed’ out, so I have duly lopped her”.
The present Queen was among Spencer’s many fans, and as Duchess of Cornwall she invited the actress and her co-stars to Clarence House for a reception in 2021, marking the show’s 70th anniversary.
Last year the Queen celebrated the 20,000th episode of the show by raising a glass to the “joy, tears and laughter” it gives.
The Queen paid tribute to Spencer in a post on social media, calling her “a much-loved part of so many people’s lives, brilliantly combining in Peggy Woolley the roles of reassuring matriarch and ‘gangsta granny’.”
She said: “She will be greatly missed and I send my heartfelt condolences to her family.”
In the mid-1950s, Spencer took a break from playing Peggy and the role was taken over by Thelma Rogers. Spencer returned to the role in the early 1960s, when Rogers departed.
Spencer was made both an OBE and CBE and in June 2010 she received the Freedom of the City of London.
