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A giant chalk man carved into a west country hillside is living up to its legendary status as a figure of fertility by producing a baby boom in the surrounding area.
Since Victorian times, the 180ft Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset has been said to cure childlessness and bless women with improved fertility.
Now the women in the surrounding towns and villages have the highest birth rates in the country.
The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the women of North Dorset have on average three children each – nearly double the national average and nearly three times as much as the city dwellers of Westminster.
In the past locals would erect a maypole on the earthwork, around which childless couples would dance to promote fertility.
According to folklore, a woman who sleeps on the figure will be "blessed with fecundity", and infertility may be cured through having sex on top of the figure, especially the phallus.
Standing erect for locals to see the giant could be having an inspirational effect on couples in the area said locals.
Katie Raine, a nursery manager, said the increasing number of small clients at the Archway Nursery in Pimperne – which is in sight of the Giant – were living proof of the findings.
“We can take 73 children in any one day and we’re absolutely chock-a-block," she said.
"We have a baby unit for five infants, and that’s booked until next year, so there’s definitely a baby boom on."
The findings – from a survey of 10,000 North Dorset women aged between 15 and 44 – placed the district at the top of the charts, leaving the London borough of Westminster at the bottom, with just 1.16 children per woman.
Birth rates had been rising steadily since the millennium, reaching 1.97 per woman in 2008, from a low of 1.65 in 2000.
North Dorset’s survey-topping fertility rate beats the highest recorded national average, when figures recorded in 1964 revealed women were likely to produce 2.93 children in a lifetime.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -boom.html
