Hinton Martell

Hinton Martell (also known as Hinton Martel) is a village and former civil parish, now in the civil parish of Hinton, in the county of Dorset in southern England. It lies within the East Dorset administrative district of the county, three miles north of the town of Wimborne Minster. In the 2001 Census the parish had a population of 368. The civil parish was abolished on 1 April 2015 and merged with Hinton Parva to form Hinton.[1]

Hinton Martell
Fountain and Parish Church
Hinton Martell Location within Dorset
Population	368
OS grid reference	SU013061
Civil parish	Hinton
District	East Dorset
Shire county	Dorset
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	WIMBORNE
Postcode district	BH21
Dialling code	01258
Police	Dorset
Fire	Dorset and Wiltshire
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	North Dorset

Hinton Martell was once known as Hinetone, the village of the monks. It was owned at this time by Eudo Martel, a Frenchman whose surname meant hammer.

The village has a church and thatched cottages, and also a rather unusual fountain. The current fountain is a replacement for an original which was built low for sheep to drink from. In 1905 in his Highways and Byways in Dorset, Sir Frederick Treves called the original "a fountain as may be found in a suburban tea garden or in front of a gaudy Italian villa." He continues, "The fountain, of painted metal, tawdry and flimsy, represents a boy standing in one dish while he holds another on his head. No unhappy detail is spared: the ambitious pedestal, the three impossible dolphins, the paltry squirt of water, are all here. How this cafe chantant ornament has found its way into a modest and secluded hamlet there is no evidence to show".[2] The fountain was irreparably damaged in the severe winter of 1963. It was replaced, and was revealed in 1965 by Miss Anne Sidney of Poole, the 'Miss World' winner of that year.