Queen Victoria and the Dorset Piddle Riddle
Embarrassed by Dorset Piddle? I think not. Eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria (bottom right) with ladies-in-waiting, pictured in 1837. As Princess Victoria, she’d visited West Dorset four years before.
LET’S review just one paragraph in The Little Book of Dorset, compiled by Emma Mansfield and newly published by Lovely Little Books of Cornwall (£5.99).
From page 34: “Whilst there’s little recorded evidence to prove it, legend has it that the villages of Puddletown and Briantspuddle, which used to contain the word ‘piddle’, changed their village titles to avoid embarrassing Queen Victoria whilst she was visiting.”
Why is there “little recorded evidence”? Because, it’s not true.
Having said that, it’s not easy to establish what did happen.
Jeremy James offered a nicely chatty account of the great Piddle Riddle in a BBC Man Alive programme about the South Dorset Hunt, which was broadcast in January 1973 (and wouldn’t it be fascinating to be able to see that whole programme again?)
Something Piddle or Piddle Something
Mr James ventured: “In the old days, practically all the the towns and villages round here were called either Something Piddle or Piddle Something.
“But in Victorian times, the names of the towns on the main road running from Dorchester to the east into London were all changed; they became places like Briantspuddle and Puddletown.
“And they were changed, according to the legend, to preserve the propriety of the Queen, who was on a visit to Dorchester.
“But Victoria only visited this part of the world once, in 1833, and then it was to go to Lyme Regis, and not Dorchester, and she was only a princess.
“When she became Queen, and prudery became respectable, then the names were changed.
“Not to spare the blushes of the Queen, but to spare the blushes of the girls who had just joined the GPO’s newest service, the telegraph service.”
A Victorian telegram machine.
Mr James went on to say that the only traditional Dorset names to have been retained are Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton. And of course there’s the River Piddle itself. [Note: Dorset County Council sought in 1956 to change Puddletown to Piddletown, but residents objected].
However, Mr James does appear to have missed some elements.
Princess Victoria’s Dorset visit
As luck would have it, the excellent Dorset Ancestors blog recently published a long account of 14-year-old Princess Victoria’s visit to Dorset and Devon in the summer of 1833.
She sailed with her mother from the Isle of Wight to Weymouth.
To quote Dorset Ancestors:
“The townspeople of Weymouth turned out and greeted their royal highnesses as illustrious visitors. It seemed the whole population was proceeding from the King George III statue to the Quay. God Save the King was played as the royal party mounted the King’s Stairs used by King George III on his frequent holidays in the resort; they were then driven in carriages to the Royal Hotel facing the beach.
“The following day after an official reception the princess and duchess travelled in a carriage to Melbury House in north Dorset to be entertained there by the Earl of Ilchester. They were accompanied out of town by many of the inhabitants and a detachment of Lt.Col. Frampton’s Troop of Dorsetshire Yeomanry.
“Every prominent building in Dorchester was decorated with flowers, and there were flags waving and the sound of bells and cannons as horses were changed en route to Maiden Newton and Melbury, where according to Victoria’s diary they arrived at about 5 p.m.”
So Jeremy James was wrong. Princess Victoria did visit Dorchester, but she did not then go east. Instead, she visited Beaminster’s new tunnel and went to Bridport, Charmouth and Lyme Regis. From Lyme she sailed to Torquay and Plymouth.
On her way back, she travelled informally by coach, going via Bridport, Dorchester, Winfrith and Wareham. So, she may well have gone near the Piddle Somethings and the Something Piddles, but it’s impossible to believe that villages would suddenly change their names because of this.
The legend recounted in The Little Book of Dorset is not true, any more than it’s true to say in the same book (p.184) that John Fowles was born in Lyme Regis. He wasn’t.
I wonder if the girls of the GPO’s telegraph service did blush at the word Piddle? Or whether the people sending messages did? Or both?
I remember last year seeing someone delete a line on Twitter (the modern telegram service?) saying “I’m a Piddle drinker myself”. The woman I’m thinking of was referring to the Dorset Piddle Brewery.
At least, I’m pretty sure she was.