Jennifer featured in some of the show's most high-profile and controversial storylines, mainly involving her family or her relationship with husband Brian Aldridge (Charles Collingwood).
During her teenage years in Ambridge, she had a dalliance with the local cowman and later the birth of their son out of wedlock, a divorce, her marriage to wealthy landowner Brian Aldridge, coping with his numerous affairs, the loss of her Home Farm farmstead and many financial woes.
[4] Piper recalls receiving notes from the directors to make the character more "couldn't care less" and "a bit of a tearaway" in those early years.
In 1966, Jennifer abandoned plans to become a teacher and a writer[6] and slept with the local cowman, Paddy Redman, which led to the birth of her son Adam, out of wedlock.
Her grandmother, Doris Archer (Gwen Berryman) told Jennifer she must immediately marry Paddy upon finding out, and her alcoholic father Jack threatened to throw her out of home.
"I got a letter written on lined notepaper from an elderly brother and sister living together in Plaistow (in London's East End)," Piper recalled.
[10] Fresh from the divorce to her first husband, Roger Travers-Macy, Jennifer met the Sherborne-educated Brian Aldridge at a dinner party hosted by Carol Tregorran.
[11] The official Archers website says this began "Jennifer's ascendance to the social pinnacle of Ambridge" and developed the character into "the elegant, capable pillar of the community".
Church leaders and newspaper columnists debated the fling,[13] which saw Brian start up an illicit affair with Hathaway, a much-younger married doctor's wife between 2001–2002.
The episodes leading up to Brian's admission to Jennifer were heard by 4.75 million listeners, and more than 6000 people sent emails to the BBC over the so-called "hayseed porn".
The Aldridges got off on the wrong foot with neighbour Kirsty Miller (Annabelle Dowler), first by a loud birthday party and then Jennifer accidentally cutting her phone line while trimming a bush.
[15] In the episode broadcast on 22 January 2023, Jennifer is spending a weekend away with her sister Lillian (Sunny Ormonde) at a spa in Stratford-upon Avon.
As Kate, Adam, Alice, Lillian and Justin wait outside Jennifer's hospital room, Brian emerges and announces that doctors did "everything they could, but her heart just wasn't strong enough."
As she and siblings Adam and Alice read it they discover the reason their mother didn't want them to know about her condition was because she was "putting the good things first".
In the same episode, Jolene Archer (Buffy Davis) leads drinkers at The Bull in a toast for Jennifer, calling her "one of Ambridge's most remarkable and beloved residents".
[citation needed] Fans of the show had speculated on social media for months about the future of the character due to Piper's long absence from the series.
[citation needed] Piper was last heard on the show in an episode broadcast on 15 February 2022[18] but had been noticeably absent thereafter, only being referred to by other on-air characters.
"[19] The Telegraph's Charlotte Runcie called Jennifer's death "the end of an era for an Archer's icon", adding while she wasn't easily likeable "over 60 years she certainly had her share of dramatic storylines".
Despite the trauma of her end, not least for Lilian, it was good of the writers to give her a wonderfully fitting final weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon, spent at the spa and visiting the Shakespeare's Birthplace museum.