It is situated on the River Pulham in the Brendon Hills within the Exmoor National Park, close to Wimbleball Lake, a water supply reservoir constructed in the 1970s and completed in 1979.

[4] The parish includes the village of Withiel Florey, where the Church of St Mary Magdalene has 12th-century origins and has been designated as a Grade II* listed building,[5] and the hamlets of Bury, Gupworthy and Hartford.

[6] By the later 12th century Brompton Regis had been granted to William de Say, who founded Barlynch Priory in the west of the parish.

[7] Gupworthy was the terminus of the West Somerset Mineral Railway which ran from the ironstone mines in the Brendon Hills to the port of Watchet on the Bristol Channel.

Conservation matters (including trees and listed buildings) and environmental issues are also the responsibility of the council.

[14] It is also part of the Tiverton and Minehead county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.