River Piddle
The River Piddle or Trent or North River is a small river in rural Dorset which waters a long and fertile valley. It lends its name, whether "Piddle" or "Trent" or both, to a number of villages in the valley.
Course
The Piddle rises just west of Alton Pancras church at ST696023. Alton Pancras is the first to be named form the river as its name in Anglo-Saxon times was æwylm tun, recorded in Domesday as Awultune, meaning "River source village".
From Alton Pancras the infant Trent flows south (shadowed by the B4313 road) to the delightfully named Piddletrenthide, a village which uses both of the river's names. From Piddletrenthide the Piddle or Trent then continues south through White Lackington and Piddlehinton, curving gradually southeast to Puddleton, where its maturer waters beautify Ilsington House and absorb the Devil's Brook from the north.
By this point the Piddle has begun to flow amongst broad meadows, where its stream is broken into several backwaters.
Flowing eastwards the Piddle passes Athelhampton House to Tolpuddle, then to Affpuddle and Briantspuddle and Throop. Briantspuddle Heath and Throop Heath and afforested and maintained by the Forestry Commission. The army have a firing range on Tonerspuddle Heath.
The Trent then continues southeast between woodland and heath broadening down to Wareham, which its meadows split into two parts; Wareham and Northport.
Thereafter it becomes tidal and after a mile it enters the Wareham Channel which begins to separate the Isle of Purbeck from the body of the shire. The Piddle enters the Channel immediately beside the River Frome, the conjoined waters forming the channel, which soon opens into Poole Harbour and thence the English Channel.
For much of its course, the Piddle flows parallel with its bigger neighbour, the Frome
Name
The river has two or three names, primarily going by the names "Piddle" or "Trent", though "North River" is used close to its mouth. Having two interchangeable names is not unknown in Dorset, as the inhabitants of Shroton (or Iwerne Courtney) and Preston (or Iwerne Stepleton) and those of East Herring (or Chaldon Herring) will testify.
Many of the villages it passes through are named after it: Piddletrenthide, Piddlehinton, Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turnerspuddle, and Tonerspuddle Heath is beside it. With two exceptions, each of those names contains "puddle" rather than "piddle". A local tradition has it that the villages were once named with "Piddle" but renamed to avoid embarrassment before a visit by Queen Victoria. However, there is no evidence of this and Puddletown was certainly still called Piddletown into the 1950s.
