Archie Oxley

In the 2013 ITV adaptation of Greenshaw's Folly, Archie Oxley is the son of Louisa Oxley. This name is non-canonical. In the original story, Louisa Oxley had two sons but they are not named. Archie Oxley, who plays a major role in the main plot and several side plots is portrayed by Bobby Smalldridge.

Archie Oxley has a much larger role in the adaptation that the two sons in the original story. Here, instead of just being dropped off on the way to way by their mother, Archie comes to live at Greenshaw's Folly with his mother. There he is made welcome and befriend both by Katherine Greenshaw, who takes him on a tour of the house, garden and her greenhouse, and by the gardener Alfred Pollock, who introduces him to his hobby of archery. Later Miss Greenshaw, noticing this interest, also presents him with a toy archery set.

Archie contributes significantly to the solution of the crime by sharing with Miss Marple what he had learnt from Miss Greenshaw. While walking in the greenhouse, he shows Miss Marple a distillation set up installed by Miss Greenshaw. She had told Archie about the properties of belladonna--how it was poisonous but also useful. She showed him how she distilled her own atropine from belladonna to make her eyedrops. This gives Miss Marple an epiphany--the mysterious phrase they had heard Miss Greenshaw utter "pile-of-carp" was actually "pilocarpine", an antidote to atropine. Miss Marple thus surmises that Miss Greenshaw had been poisoned before she was stabbed with an arrow.

Archie also played a role in two sideplots. In one, Louisa's estranged husband Philip Oxley, a violent man who had beaten both the mother and son is hunting for them and finally finds them at Greenshaw's Folly. He makes two attempts to kidnap Archie but is foiled on both occasions by the intervention of Alfred Pollock.

The other sideplot concerns the relationship between Decimus Greenshaw and St Faith's Orphanage. While exploring the out-of-bounds laboratory facilities of Decimus Greenshaw in the house, Archie suddenly finds himself locked in. Cicely Beauclerk suddenly shows up and drags him out and away from the house. She keeps calling him "Edwin" and telling him that it is for his own good, that she is rescuing him from Greenshaw. It later transpires that she was fantasising and reliving her experience of her childhood as orphans in St. Faith's. She had been helpless when her brother Edwin dragged away and used for Decimus Greenshaw's unethical medical experiments. She thought in her fantasies that the experiments had started up again and that Archie was Edwin.