The parish lies approximately 9 miles (14 kilometres) southeast of the town of Sherborne and covers about 1,900 acres (770 hectares)[1] at an elevation of 75 to 160 metres (250 to 520 feet).

[2] It is sited on Corallian limestone soil[3] at the southern edge of the Blackmore Vale, close to the northern scarp face of the Dorset Downs.

[6] In 1086 in the Domesday Book Mappowder was recorded as Mapledre and appears in four entries; it was in Buckland Newton Hundred, had 33.3 households and a total taxable value of 8.3 geld units.

The chancel was extended in 1868 by the Wingfield Digby family of Sherborne Castle, who owned the village in Victorian times.

[13] Novelist and short story writer Theodore Francis Powys lived in Mappowder for the last 13 years of his life; he died and was buried here in 1953.