A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…but does that apply in Shitterton?
The towns and idyllic hamlets of rural Britain have gone head to head in a new survey – to find the UK’s most unfortunate place name.
There were many contenders, but the tiny collection of homes known as Shitterton on the edge of the village of Bere Regis , has come out on top.
The tiny settlement between Dorchester and Poole beat the nearby valley of Scratchy Bottom, near Durdle Door in Dorset and Brokenwind in Aberdeenshire in the survey by http://www.findmypast.co.uk.
Shitterton is a very literal English translation of the village name recorded in Norman French in the 11th century Domesday Book as Scatera or Scetra which means a little town that is on the stream of a midden or sewer.
But Ian Ventham, chairman of Bere Regis Parish Council and proud Shitterton resident, said he does not find the name of the hamlet, with its long history, embarrassing.
Shitterton hit the headlines in 2010 when residents got so fed up with pranksters stealing the standard road signs displaying the name that they clubbed together and bought a £680 one-and-a-half-tonne Purbeck stone version set in concrete.
According to the website, the valley of Scratchy Bottom is thought to take its name from the fact that it is a rough and rugged hollow.
Brokenwind was known as ‘Broken Wynd’ in the 19th century, with wynd, the website said, a Scots word for a narrow path that snakes or winds between two larger roads.
