No sniggering at the back, please, as we plunder Wikipedia for this week’s unusual article about a village in Dorset that probably never appeared in any of Thomas Hardy’s novels…
Shitterton is a hamlet in Dorset, England. It has attracted worldwide attention for its name, which dates back at least a thousand years and means “farmstead on the stream used as an open sewer”. Although it has been voted “Britain’s worst place name”, native Shittertonians have expressed pride in their hamlet’s heritage, which includes a fine collection of historic thatched buildings dating back to the 18th century and earlier.
The unusual name of the hamlet dates back at least 1,000 years to Anglo-Saxon times. It was recorded in The Domesday Book of 1086 as Scatera or Scetra, a Norman French rendering of an Old English name derived from the word scite, meaning dung. This word became schitte in Middle English and shit in modern English. The name alludes to the stream that bisects the hamlet, which appears to have been called the Shiter or Shitter, or “brook used as a privy”. The place-name therefore means something along the lines of “farmstead on the stream used as an open sewer”. It has been recorded in a number of variants over the centuries, including Schitereston (1285), Shyterton (1332), Chiterton (1456) and Shetterton (1687). During the 19th century, prudish Victorians attempted to rename the hamlet as Sitterton. The name did not stick, though it lingers on in a few house and road names such as Sitterton Close and Sitterton House. It is not the only place-name in Britain that starts with Shit- – Shittlehope and Shitlington Crags also exist, located in County Durham and Northumberland respectively – but it appears to be the only one to actually be named after excrement.
In 2012, Shitterton was voted “Britain’s worst place-name” in a survey carried out by genealogy website Find My Past, beating Scratchy Bottom in Dorset and Brokenwind in Aberdeenshire. It was also awarded ninth place on the list of place-names in Rude Britain: The 100 Rudest Place Names in Britain. The native Shittertonians are, however, proud of their hamlet’s name. Ian Ventham, the chairman of the parish council, said: “It is a perfect rural hamlet with thatched cottages and idyllic Dorset countryside. Those of us who live here are not the least bit embarrassed by it.”
The hamlet’s name has resulted in its sign repeatedly being stolen (a fate similar to that of Fucking, Austria), requiring costly replacements to be acquired each time, to the increasing reluctance of the local council. As Ian Ventham put it:
Every two or three years somebody comes along and nicks our sign because, clearly, Shitterton is amusing. We think it was kids who would like to have it stuck on the wall in a den somewhere. I don’t think it was malicious, they just did it for fun, but it was exasperating for us. We would get a nice new shiny sign from the council and five minutes later, it was gone.
In 2010, the inhabitants banded together to purchase a 1.5 ton block of Purbeck Stone to place at the entrance to Shitterton, carved with the hamlet’s name. More than half of the 50 households chipped in £20 each and a further £70 was contributed by Purbeck district council. A truck and crane were hired by volunteers to put the stone in place, at a total cost of £680. Ian Ventham explained: “We thought, ‘Let’s put in a ton and a half of stone and see them try and take that away in the back of a Ford Fiesta’.” He cited it as an example of Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” in action: “I am not sure if he is expressly thinking about Shitterton signposts, but I think he is talking about people getting off their backsides and doing things.”
Surprising – and pleasing – to learn that it really is named after shit.
Comedian Stewart Lee does a routine involving Shitterton. It’s quite amusing I seem to recall, although he is, perhaps, an acquired taste.
With Crapstone. I like him, particularly his imaginary phone conversations.