The parish is in the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and was one of the clearings in the former Selwood Forest.

Most of the rest of the parish is drained by porous soil and underground gulleys, being largely chalk subsoil, which slopes gently down to the source of the River Wylye on the eastern border.

[6] The earliest reference to the village is a Saxon land charter of 878, when the area had already been occupied for thousands of years.

[7] In the early 12th century, the manor was added to the extensive landholdings of the prominent steward to Henry II, Manasser Biset.

Sometime before 1164, Biset founded an asylum for girls suffering from leprosy, choosing a site north of the village where the present priory ruins stand.

[8] Its land was awarded by the King to local landowner Thomas Seymour, the brother of the 1st Duke of Somerset.

The wide variety of goods included local produce and, later, coal from the Somerset mines.

[9][10] Around 1688, Sir Edward Seymour, 4th Baronet deserted his fire-damaged family home at Berry Pomeroy Castle in Devon and used the money derived from stripping that castle to fund improvements to a new house next to the church at Bradley[11] that had been started by his father, the 3rd Baronet.

[1] A two-room village school was built next to the High Street crossroads[13] in 1847, largely paid for by the Duke of Somerset.

[14] A limestone vicarage was built in Tudor style in 1843–4 on the other side of the road from the church, and enlarged in 1883; the resulting plan is described as "rambling" by Historic England.

[17] The present building is almost certainly on the site of a Saxon church or chapel; its oldest parts are the westernmost three bays of the north arcade, which appear to date from the 12th century,[17] although no clearly Norman features are visible.

[18] Its wooden cover is 17th-century, as are the pulpit, reading desk and box pews; these furnishings are similar to those of St Michael's church in the nearby parish of Mere.

[19] In the south aisle is a fine large monument to Sir Edward Seymour (d.1708), sculpted in 1728–1730 by Rysbrack to designs of James Gibbs.

[18] Bradley House, since 1750 the seat of the dukes of Somerset, was built just north-east of the church in the 17th century.

[22] A reorganisation in 1976 transferred Maiden Bradley parish to the benefice of Mere with West Knoyle,[23] and this arrangement continues.

Edmund Ludlow, landowner, MP and JP, lived at Maiden Bradley in the years before his death in 1624.

Edmund (born at Maiden Bradley c.1617), a son of the younger half-brother, was another MP and Parliamentary soldier who gained notoriety as a regicide of Charles I[32] and fled to Switzerland after the Royalists regained power in 1660.