Puddletown is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated by the River Piddle, from which it derives its name, about northeast of the county town Dorchester. Its earlier name Piddletown fell out of favour, probably because of connotations of the word "piddle". The name Puddletown was officially sanctioned in the late 1950s. Puddletown's civil parish covers and extends to the River Frome to the south. In 2013 the estimated population of the civil parish was 1450. Puddletown's parish church has significant architectural interest, particularly its furnishings and monuments. It has a 12th-century font and well-preserved woodwork, including 17th-century box pews. Thomas Hardy took an interest in the church, and the village provided the inspiration for the fictional settlement of Weatherbury in his novel Far from the Madding Crowd; Weatherbury Farm, the home of principal character Bathsheba Everdene, is based on a manor house within the parish. Toponymy The name Puddletown means 'farmstead on the River Piddle'. It derives from the Old English , a river-name meaning fen or marsh, and tūn, meaning farmstead. Several settlements along the river derive their names from it. In the upper reaches Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton retain the piddle rivername, whereas downstream Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turners Puddle use puddle. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Pitretone, and in 1212 it was Pideleton. John Speed used Puddletown for his county map of 1610. In 1848 Samuel Lewis used Piddletown in A Topographical Dictionary of England. In 1906 Sir Frederick Treves used Puddletown in Highways & Byways in Dorset—describing it as "the Town on the River Puddle" and a "curiously named place". In 1946 Piddletown was the name on voters lists. One explanation for the preference of Puddletown over Piddletown is that Major-General Charles William Thompson, who lived at Ilsington Lodge after returning from the Great War, pushed through the puddle variant because piddle had other connotations in army circles. The broadcaster and writer Ralph Wightman (1901–71), a native of the Piddle Valley and one-time Puddletown resident, believed it was due to Victorian "refinement", as he recalled that in his youth elderly aunts referred to Piddletrenthide as just "Trenthide". Roland Gant in Dorset Villages stated more explicitly that the Victorians used puddle because piddle "became a euphemism for 'piss'". The use of Puddletown rather than Piddletown was officially preserved in the late 1950s, when, according to Wightman, "a