River Piddle
| River Piddle | |
| River Trent | |
 The River Piddle at Piddlehinton | |
| Country | England |
|---|---|
| County | Dorset |
| Districts | West Dorset, Purbeck |
| Tributaries | |
| - left | Bere Stream, Devil's Brook |
| Towns and villages | Wareham, Tolpuddle, Puddletown, Piddletrenthide |
| Landmark | Athelhampton House |
| Source | Alton Pancras |
| Mouth | |
| - location | Poole Harbour, Purbeck, Dorset, England |
The River Piddle or Trent or North River is a small rural Dorset river which rises next to Alton Pancras church. Alton Pancras was originally named Awultune, a Saxon name meaning the village at the source of a river. The river's name has Germanic origins and has had various spellings over the years.[1] In AD 966 it was called the 'Pidelen', and on the church tower at Piddletrenthide—the first village to which it gives its name—it is spelled 'Pydel'.[1] Several villages which the river passes through are named after it: as well as Piddletrenthide there are Piddlehinton, Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turnerspuddle. The Victorians changed the spelling to 'Puddle', due to 'piddle' being an alternative word for 'piss',[1] although Puddletown was still called Piddletown into the 1950s.
The Piddle flows south and then south-easterly more or less parallel with its bigger neighbour, the River Frome, to Wareham, where they both enter Poole Harbour via Wareham Channel.
See also
Notes
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coordinates: 50°41′N 2°04′W / 50.683°N 2.067°W