Borchester is a

fictional town A fictional city refers to a town, city or village that is invented for fictional stories and does not exist in real life, or which people believe to exist without definitive proof, such as Plato's account of Atlantis. Cultures have always had l ...

in the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

radio series ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural settin ...

''. It is the

county town In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county and the place where the county's members of Parliament are elect ...

of the

fictional county Fictional locations are places that exist only in fiction and not in reality, such as the Dark Kingdom, Negaverse or Planet X. Writers may create and describe such places to serve as backdrop for their fictional works. Fictional locations are als ...

Borsetshire Borsetshire is a fictional county in the BBC Radio 4 series ''The Archers''. Its county town is the equally fictional Borchester. The county is supposedly set between Worcestershire and Warwickshire, but is also intended as a generic West Midlan ...

. According to series tradition it is located 6 miles north-east of Ambridge in the Am Vale and is a historic

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

and wool town. These typically English country-town features are complemented by more modern additions, such as Underwoods (an upmarket department store), Jaxx bar, which was previously a café both managed by Kenton Archer, and Ambridge Organics, the shop run by Helen Archer, who also makes the Borsetshire Blue cheese sold in Underwoods.

Location

As ''The Archers'' is usually taken to "exist" in a region centred on

Evesham Evesham () is a market town and parish in the Wychavon district of Worcestershire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is located roughly equidistant between Worcester, Cheltenham and Stratford-upon-Avon. It lies within the Vale of Evesha ...

and somewhere not too far from the

Malvern Hills The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affo ...

and the edge of the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

, Borchester could be connected to

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

Tewkesbury Tewkesbury ( ) is a medieval market town and civil parish in the north of Gloucestershire, England. The town has significant history in the Wars of the Roses and grew since the building of Tewkesbury Abbey. It stands at the confluence of the Riv ...

Pershore Pershore is a market town in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon. The town is part of the West Worcestershire parliamentary constituency. At the 2011 census, the population was 7,125. The town i ...

. Hints in the series about the range of shops, local features and road layout, as well as distances sometimes given between Borchester, Felpersham and Ambridge, tend to point to Pershore as the most likely analogy, if we assume that Felpersham = Evesham. Another school of thought has Felpersham as

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Engla ...

and Borchester as

Droitwich Spa Droitwich Spa (often abbreviated to Droitwich ) is an historic spa town in the Wychavon district in northern Worcestershire, England, on the River Salwarpe. It is located approximately south-west of Birmingham and north-east of Worcester, Engl ...

. This view is supported by the existence of a Bishop of Felpersham - Evesham does not have a Bishopric whereas Worcester does. (At one time Bishop Cyril of Felpersham was an occasional character.) Although it is a county town, it is not a city. The nearby Felpersham, which might be based on Evesham, is the seat of a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

diocese and does have the

city status City status is a symbolic and legal designation given by a national or subnational government. A municipality may receive city status because it already has the qualities of a city, or because it has some special purpose. Historically, city status ...

that usually goes with it. Borchester has a

by-pass Bypass may refer to: * Bypass (road), a road that avoids a built-up area (not to be confused with passing lane) * Flood bypass of a river Science and technology Medicine * Bypass surgery, a class of surgeries including for example: ** Heart byp ...

, built with much controversy during the 1980s. Evesham and Droitwich Spa both have by-passes but not Pershore. The BBC published a map of Borchester in the 1990s, which, across a north-south axis common to both towns, was a '

cut and paste In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy, and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The ''cut'' command removes the ...

' of

west of the axis and

Great Malvern Great Malvern is an area of the spa town of Malvern, Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, on the eastern flanks of the Worcestershire Beacon and North Hill, and is ...

to the east. A property company named Borchester Land has featured in the storyline for many years.

Facilities

Borchester is the location of the magistrates court for the area. Phil Archer served as a magistrate there for many years. In 1968, Nelson Gabriel, son of Walter Gabriel of Ambridge and a notorious rogue, was committed for trial and remanded in

Gloucester prison HM Prison Gloucester was a Category B men's prison located in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England. It was originally opened in 1792, on the site of Gloucester Castle whose keep had been used as a prison. The prison was operated by Her Majesty' ...

at the Borchester magistrates. He returned many years later to run a wine bar in the town from 1980 to 1984. Also in Borchester is Borchester General Hospital. Borchester is the scene of frequent shopping trips and social encounters in the series. It has a mixture of trendy, "southern England" features such as wine bars and upmarket delis combined with some working-class neighbourhoods. The Grundy family lived for a while in a substandard council flat in Borchester after being evicted from Grange Farm in 2000.

References

{{The Archers Fictional populated places in England The Archers