The approximate population is around 4000 people. The regular Bluestar bus services provide Purlieu's quickest link with the city of Southampton. Dibden Purlieu is twinned with Mauves-sur-Loire, France.
History
Dibden Purlieu was in the parish of Dibden, referred to in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Deepdene, "dene" being an Anglo-Saxon word for valley.[2]Purlieu is a Norman-French word meaning "the outskirts of a forest" – a place free from forest laws. In this particular case Dibden Purlieu was land removed from the New Forest in the 14th century when the forest boundaries were established by perambulations about 1300.[3] In practice the king retained or claimed, certain rights in the area, and the activities of the royal foresters in enforcing forest law there were a matter of great resentment.[3] Up to the 1950s Dibden Purlieu was a small settlement next to the village of Dibden, but the expansion of Fawley Refinery lead to a demand for more houses for workers, and Hythe and Dibden Purlieu were allowed to expand into a small town.[4] In 1983 the parish was renamed, and Dibden Purlieu is now part of the parish of Hythe and Dibden.[5]
Primary education is now provided at several schools in the village. Wildground, was the first in Armitage Avenue. The junior school opened on this site in 1962, with the infants' premises following two years later. Prior to that, the school had occupied temporary accommodation on Lunedale Road, which later included the use of the adjacent Women's Institute Hall. The village had further primary's schools added with the opening in the late 60s of the separate Orchard Infant and Orchard Junior schools on Water Lane, adjacent to Noadswood School.
^Journal of the Town Planning Institute, (1953), Volume 39, page 87: "At Fawley the construction of Europe's largest oil refinery on Southampton Water has created a demand for more housing accommodation and it is proposed to satisfy this by expanding the existing villages of Hythe and Dibden Purlieu into a small town of 10,000."
