Mischievous Moniker: Locals Go On Mission To Stop Tourists Stealing Signs In? Tiny UK Village With Rude Names

In the picturesque countryside of the United Kingdom, there is a tiny community with a name so daring and unorthodox that it never fails to stir eyebrows and occasionally tempt courageous individuals to commit a naughty act.

Meet the people of this strange hamlet, whose lives have been intertwined with an uncommon predicament: the regular theft of their wooden name signs. Frustrated by the constant theft, the residents have decided to take matters into their own hands and journey to protect their village's identity.

This community, nestled in the lovely scenery of Dorset, has garnered a reputation for a name that dances on the line of decency, amusing and provoking in equal measure.

The daring of its moniker has piqued the interest of visitors worldwide, attracting visitors who are occasionally driven to carry a piece of the hamlet home¡ªvery literally. What appears to some as a harmless prank has become a source of aggravation for the inhabitants, who cherish their village name.

Beware: Villagers In The UK Go On Mission To Stop Visitors Stealing Signs

Credit: Shutterstock

Butthole Lane and Fannyfield are two examples of places in the UK with amusing, odd, or plain problematic names. However, one village's name is so offensive that they have decided to take action to prevent people from coming to steal its sign.

Shitterton, a hamlet in Dorset, frequently appears on lists of the rudest place names in the UK, and as such, people drive there only to see what it's like and take a picture of its sign. However, in 2010, the hamlet's residents became so fed up with their sign being stolen that they erected a stone replica instead.

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"Every two or three years, somebody comes along and nicks our sign because Shitterton is amusing," villager Ian Ventham told the BBC then.

Ventham believes kids wanted it hung on the wall in a den somewhere. "I don't think it was malicious; they were just having fun, but it was aggravating for us." We'd get a great new gleaming sign from the council, and it'd be gone in five minutes."

Purbeck District Council, he argued, would just keep erecting fresh signs, only for them to be stolen as well. One year, there were three robberies of the sign, made of wood and easily detachable by someone looking for a souvenir, so people devised a plan.

Credit: Google Street View

"Purbeck District Council, being short on funds at the moment, would simply have replaced it with another sign," he explained. That would have been taken, so we held a whip-round and bought this lovely piece of Purbeck stone, which will be slightly more challenging to remove at a tonne and a half."

The hamlet's 100 or so residents banded together to contribute ?20 each to the sign's ?680 cost. The council also offered them ?70 towards the sign, which was the cost of replacing the stolen one.

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Shitterton lies near Wareham on the outskirts of Bere Regis, close to the A35 between Poole and Dorchester, and has a stream that runs into the nearby River Paddle. Scatera or Scetra is documented in the Domesday Book in Norman French as Scatera or Scetra, which means "small town on the stream of a midden or sewer."

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