Records from Saxon times, about 826 CE, show that the Chalke Valley area was thriving.

The detailed terms bequeath to her daughter Æthelflœd an engraved bracelet, a brooch, some named household articles including books, and "the farm at Ebbesbourne with the title deed as a perpetual inheritance... and the men and the livestock on the land there to her too."

[4] The Domesday Book of 1086 divided the Chalke Valley into eight manors: Chelke (Chalke - Bowerchalke and Broadchalke), Eblesborne (Ebbesbourne Wake), Fifehide (Fifield), Cumbe (Coombe Bissett), Humitone (Homington), Odestoche (Odstock), Stradford (Stratford Tony and Bishopstone) and Trow (roughly Alvediston and Tollard Royal).

(TRE = tempore Regis Edwardii, the time of Edward the Confessor, 1042–1066) Taxed for 14 hides.

It covered the parishes of Berwick St John, Ebbesbourne Wake, Fifield Bavant, Semley, Tollard Royal and 'Chalke'.

Historian Peter Meers notes in Ebbesbourne Wake through the Ages that the 1926 and 1965 editions of Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage call the general spelling of "bourne/borne" inconsistent.

[9] The present one dedicated to St John the Baptist is largely 14th-century, with 13th-century window details and a 12th-century font.

[10] From 1859 the Vicar of Ebbesbourne doubled as Rector of Fifield Bavant, and in 1923 the two parishes were united.

It falls within the Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for all significant local government functions.