Henry VIII is said to have given Bardfield to Anne of Cleves as part of his divorce settlement and a number of buildings in the village are associated with Anne of Cleves, including the Grade II-listed Great Lodge and its associated Grade I-listed barn, now named after her.

Great Bardfield played an important role in the history of the oxlip (Primula elatior) which, in the UK, is a rare plant only found where Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire meet.

Originally it was thought that oxlips were cowslip-primrose hybrids but in 1842 Henry Doubleday and Charles Darwin conducted tests on plants collected from Great Bardfield and concluded that this was not so.

The Great Bardfield Artists of the 1940s and 1950s were: John Aldridge, Edward Bawden, George Chapman, Stanley Clifford-Smith, Audrey Cruddas, Walter Hoyle, Michael Rothenstein, Eric Ravilious (who lodged with Bawden at Brick House), Sheila Robinson and Marianne Straub.

Other artists linked to the art community include Joan Glass, Duffy Ayers, Laurence Scarfe and the political cartoonist David Low.