Jean Archer was described as “Amersham’s favourite daughter” by the local press when she retired from Chiltern District Council in 1987.

She had served as a councillor from 1976 and was deputy mayor for two years before becoming Amersham’s first female mayor in 1984. A contemporary of our late Queen, Jean was born just four days before Princess Elizabeth on 17 April 1926.

Unfortunately, this was a cause of some irritation as her mother liked to dress young Jean in copies of the little princess’s frilly dresses which she always hated!

Jean died in 2004, aged 78, but she also lived an active life of public service and was a “formidable defender of fair play”, actively campaigning for the rights of all people in the town.

Jean was also chairman of the Amersham-Bensheim Association, president of the Amersham Community Centre, vice-president of Amersham Town Football Club, president of the Old Amersham WI, and founder of the Old Amersham Follies.

Jean always stood as an Independent councillor and declared that “I never approved of politics in local government.

I am only interested in Amersham and its surrounding area and not in politics at all.”

Jean is probably best remembered as a historian and the writer of eight local history books including Hidden Buckinghamshire and a history of Amersham Town Football Club, which was well received by the then club president, Graham Taylor, later manager of England.

Archer Court in Chesham Road was named in her honour in 1997.

Amersham roots

In an interview in 1990, Jean declared her passion for her hometown: “I would like to be remembered as someone who was for the people of Amersham. I have an overwhelming interest in Amersham. The town has been my great passion for many years now.

One’s roots give one a sense of being.”

Jean’s Amersham roots went back at least 250 years on her mother’s side.

Jean’s grandfather, James Gilbert, worked for the Weller Brewery as a drayman and the family lived in one of the Weller cottages at Bury End. Her father John Courtney Archer was born in the Wandsworth and Clapham Union Workhouse, but by the age of three he was living as the foster child of Henry and Sarah Harris at 40 High Street Amersham.

During WWI John Archer served as a gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery and had a lifelong love of horses and animals which he passed on to his daughter. After the war he worked as a blacksmith for Squire Drake who kept a string of racehorses and hunters at Shardeloes and Coldmoreham Farm. John married Mary Gilbert in 1923 and lived at Shardeloes Lodge, where Jean was born three years later.

Her brother, John, followed in 1932. According to Jean it was a “real country town”, she “was brought up in a sea of hounds” and remembered “lots of ladies wearing veils and riding side-saddle”.

Jean lived her whole life in Amersham Old Town and wrote: “It was not often that a family then living in Old Amersham travelled far from the old town.

Even a trip “up on the Common” to a small child was considered quite an outing.

So it was to me, and I was filled with pleasure when my mother began to bustle about her household tasks with added impetus saying ‘We shall be going up on the Common this afternoon’.”

‘The Common’ meant the shops around Amersham Station, particularly Bucks Library, where Jean would borrow books like Great Expectations from the upstairs lending library, having been introduced to the Classics by her father.

WWII

As a schoolgirl at St Mary’s, Jean remembered the school being strictly segregated between boys and girls with iron railings between. She was 14 when WWII broke out and immediately joined the Girls Training Corp. She remembered taking part in parades to raise money for the war effort and serving tea to the visiting submariners of HMS Unbroken (Nostalgia April 16, 2021).

Jean could play the accordion and the piano by ear and took her accordion to the hospital to entertain convalescing soldiers. She was an excellent dancer and would also give exhibition dances, the Pasa Doble being her favourite. Although she had an American GI boyfriend, and later became engaged to her dancing partner, David, Jean never married.

Career 

After school Jean studied at Bedford Square College. Her first job was for a firm of insurance brokers which had moved out to Amersham-on-the-Hill to escape the Blitz.

After the war she commuted to their offices by steam train as far as Rickmansworth and then by electric train to the City.

She soon realised that being a commuter wasn’t for her and briefly worked on the Green Line buses between Amersham and Crawley. Her father was a bus driver from Amersham Garage for over 30 years. Jean then worked in conveyancing at the old town firm of solicitors, Francis and How.

Their High Street offices were next to their great rivals, Bazzards. “The two staff teams got on very well” recalled Jean, “the fair used to come outside the offices and we all used to ride on the big roundabout together”.

After 20 years Jean then moved to be a secretary at Amersham Rural District Council in Elmodesham House, becoming secretary to the Chief Executive, a position she held for 14 years until her retirement. When Elmodesham House was sold for development, it was Jean who was able to confirm to the developer that the walls were covered with valuable paintings by James Thornhill. To her great distress some of the paintings were then stolen and have never been recovered.

Amersham Museum

As a founder member and later chairman of the Amersham Society, Jean was instrumental in establishing Amersham Museum and through her donation of George Ward photographs, Amersham has been left a priceless legacy of life in the town over 100 years ago. Perhaps it is time to honour ‘Amersham’s favourite daughter’ with a permanent memorial in the town?