From 1136, Bishops of Salisbury held land at West Lavington, sometimes considered to be part of their holding at Potterne.

Two further marriages brought the tenancy to James Bertie, later 1st Earl of Abingdon; his descendants sold it c.1766 to the Duke of Marlborough.

[12] In 1874, Fiddington tithing was transferred from West Lavington to form part of the parish created for the new church at Easterton.

The school was founded in 1542 by William Dauntesey, a London merchant from a local family; it moved to its present site around 1898, when its main building was built in red brick to designs of C.E.

At the same time, Lavington Station was built north of Littleton Panell where the line crosses the A360; it was closed in 1967.

William Talman, architect and pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, was born at West Lavington around 1650.

[27] David Saunders, whose life inspired Hannah More's tract The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, was born at Littleton Pannell in 1717 and buried in West Lavington churchyard in 1796.

Son of the village baker, he was educated at Dauntsey's School and Cambridge University, and initially worked as an industrial psychologist.

After a distinguished war record, he was thought (by John Betjeman, Elizabeth Bowen, L.P. Hartley and others)[citation needed] to be one of Britain's most promising novelists of the 1940s.

Actor George Baker, best known for playing Inspector Wexford on television, lived in the village prior to his death in 2011.