PERHAPS it’s the proximity to a giant fertility symbol that’s making the women of North Dorset so fecund.

New figures have revealed that women living in North Dorset – a few miles from the 180ft Cerne Abbas Giant – are likely to produce three children in their lifetimes.

Such an impressive fertility rate puts North Dorset’s women at the top of a table collated by the Office of National Statistics.

Nursery manager Katie Raine said the increasing number of small clients at the Archway Nursery in Pimperne were living proof of the findings.

“We can take 73 children in any one day and we’re absolutely chock-a-block. We have a baby unit for five infants, and that’s booked until next year, so there’s definitely a baby boom on,” said Katie.

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.

Samantha Beadman, deputy manager of Winterbourne’s Day Nursery in Winterbourne Kingston, said news of the area’s chart-topping fertility rate came as a surprise.

“I hadn’t really thought about it.

“Perhaps it’s the fresh country air. We do have power cuts from time to time!” she joked.

The new figures are based on research conducted last year. The findings showed a drop in the fertility rate for the first time since 2001.

Birth rates had been rising steadily since the millennium, reaching 1.97 per woman in 2008, from a base line 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.