[5] The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded that Fontemale was in Sixpenny Hundred;[7] it had 3 mills,[8] 68 households, and the estate's lord and tenant-in-chief was Shaftesbury Abbey.

[7] A land survey made by the abbey in about 1130–35 shows that the Fontmell Magna estate had 65 tenants, of whom 41 were villeins, each holding between half and one yardland, and the rest were cottagers, each with about four acres.

Fontmell Magna is in The Beacon electoral ward, which extends to Cann in the north, Sutton Waldron in the south and Guy's Marsh in the west.

The ward, which had a population of 2,277 in the 2011 census,[10] is part of the constituency of North Dorset, and is currently represented in the UK parliament by the Conservative Simon Hoare.

[11] The parish covers 3,200 acres (1,300 ha) and extends from the dip slope of Cranborne Chase in the east, to the area around the settlement of Hartgrove in the Blackmore Vale in the west.

[17] Lieutenant Philip Salkeld V.C., who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in blowing open the Kashmir Gate in Delhi, India, in 1857, was born and grew up in Fontmell Magna, where his father was the rector.

In 1934, writer and rural revivalist Rolf Gardiner and his wife Marabel bought a cottage on the estate, which they farmed.