It is also part of the Wells and Mendip Hills county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

According to the 2001 Census, the Nedge Ward (which includes Chewton Mendip), had 2,074 residents, living in 893 households, with an average age of 40.0 years.

Of these 78% of residents describing their health as 'good', 18% of 16- to 74-year-olds had no qualifications; and the area had an unemployment rate of 1.8% of all economically active people aged 16–74.

Her earliest years were spent at her birthplace: Shortwood House, Litton, in Somerset, to which her father Walter Capron had retired from his London practice.

A now famous three-quarter length portrait of her in the gardens of Shortwood House in the summer of 1914, was painted by Henry Strachey, at that time the art critic of the Spectator, who lived nearby.