Piddlehinton and Piddletrenthide unlike most of the piddles in Dorset were not changed to Puddlehinton  and Puddletrenthide by the arther righteous Victorians, they objected to the word Piddle being used, but this was the name of the River that they were on. Hence Puddletown was originally Piddletown etc,

Piddlehinton though is a parish and a rather compact village ont he River Trent or Piddle as it was called and is 5½ miles north east of Dorchester and Piddletrenthide lies to the north, Puddletown (Piddletown) to the southwest. Muston which was a hamlet of the parish is now a lot smaller.

The Manor was once owned by Eton College.  The church dedicated to St Mary was built inthe 13th century in the Perpendicular style was restored in 1868. On Old Christmas Day (6th January) the custom of distributing mince pies, bread and a pint of ale was the norm but in 1838 a parson who did hold  with this tradition put an end to it and made the villages so angry that they smashed the windows of his church.

On the Dorchester side of the village there were some wartime buildings which were occupied from November 1944 to just before Christmas of the same year by the USS 262nd Infantry Division and also part of the US 66th Infantry Division. Who were waiting to be shipped out of Southampton to remove any Germans who still remained in Western France and to clear the Bretagne Peninsula. As well as this they were also given the task of capturing and holding the U-boat pens at Brest, but one of the U-boat captains thought better of this and torpedoed the Leopoldville a Belgian passenger line acting as a troop ship, off the coat of Cherbourg and that Christmas Eve saw the deaths of 802 US troops.

Piddletrenthide is a village divided into three tithings with the upper one containing the church and manor house, and a group of cottages make up the middle, and White Lackington making the third tithing. And here can be found one of the county's finest churches, with a tower that dates back to the 15th century, gargoyles standing guard and looking down on all who enter.

But what gives this church its charm is the yellow brown and grey colouring in the walls that contrasts well with the green downs against which it stands. It is a long village 8 miles north of Dorchester and the name which is recorded in the Domesday Book means 'estate of thirty hides on the River Piddle' and the trente comes from the French for thirty. It was known as Uppiddelen in Saxon times and this was probably referring to the Upper and middle tithing. On an inscription of the west door of the church tower there is an example of the first recorded use of the arbic numeral  'Est pydeltrenth villa in dorsedie comitatu Nascitur in illa quam rexit Vicariatu 1487' The use of roman numerals carried on in Europe for about another century so it is a rather unusual find.