For years, visitors to Chideock have been greeted by a hedge painstakingly trimmed to spell out the name of the Dorset village.

       However, it seems the task of maintaining the hedgerow has fallen by the wayside in recent times after council workers arrived this week to find the hedge completely overgrown.

       Advertisement

       But as they went about over-zealously trimming it, the workers inadvertently chopped off the last two letters – with the hedge at the Fosse Orchard car park now spelling “Chideo” instead.

       Chideock Parish council has “profusely apologised” to the 700 or so residents of the village, near the picturesque Jurassic Coast, over the error.

       In a statement on social media, councillor Aidan Biggins shared an email from the clerk of Bridport Town council explaining what had happened, along with a photograph of the hedge.

       It read: “This morning, the grounds team carried out maintenance works to the hedge. But unfortunately one of the operatives was unaware of the sculpting of the name ‘Chideock’ into the hedge, which was not obvious when the work started because it had become very overgrown.

       “Consequently, the letters ‘c’ and ‘k’ from the end were cut away in error. I am very sorry for what has happened.

       “We will be happy to work with the parish council to see what can reasonably be done to restore the lettering – although I appreciate this will not be straightforward.”

       Residents expressed relief that the trimming was down to human error rather than something more nefarious. Anna Dunn wrote: “Thanks for letting us know – solves the mystery of whether it was vandalism, but one thing one cannot insure for is personal error.”