The place name and historic evidence indicates that it was probably the site of a primary Saxon minster church and was at the centre of a large episcopal estate.

[3] In its history Beaminster has been a centre of manufacture of linen and woollens, the raw materials for which were produced in the surrounding countryside.

In the English Civil War the town declared for Parliament and was sacked by Royalist forces in 1644.

Flax was grown and sheep kept on the surrounding hills and the town was locally more important than it is today: factories were constructed in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and as many as seventeen inns existed in the town in the early 20th century.

[9] Horn Park, about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.5 kilometres) northwest of Beaminster, is a neo-Georgian country house of five bays and two storeys, designed by architect T. Lawrence Dale and completed in 1911.

[10] The drawing room includes Jacobean features re-used from the largely mid-16th-century nearby Parnham House,[10] which was being altered and restored at about the time that Horn Park was being built.

Beaminster's growth has historically been along the course of these streams, resulting in a settlement pattern that is roughly star-shaped.

[13] Horn Park Quarry SSSI[14][15] produced building stone from the Inferior Oolite and some quality fossil specimens[16] before becoming a light industrial estate on the road to Broadwindsor.

Apart from the ammonites, the site displays a remarkable flat erosion surface and the most complete succession in the Upper Aalenian ironshot oolite limestone of the area.

[21] International Flavors & Fragrances[22] (previously DuPont) produce Nisaplin (E234), a commercial formulation of the natural bacteriocin nisin, at a factory in the town.

The main road through the town is the A3066, which leads to Bridport to the south and Mosterton and Crewkerne to the north.

Beaminster is part of the West Dorset constituency for elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

It has a combined sixth form with The Sir John Colfox Academy, in the nearby town of Bridport.

[43][44] Beaminster is referenced as "Emminster" in the fictional Wessex of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

[45] Dorset's 19th-century dialect poet William Barnes wrote of Beaminster:[45] Sweet Be'mi'ster, that bist a-bound By green and woody hills all round, Wi' hedges, reachèn up between A thousand vields o' zummer green.