[1] In the centre of the village is the parish church of St Martin, which dates from the 12th century and has a Norman font.

[3] In 1086 in the Domesday Book Winterborne St Martin was recorded as Wintreburne;[4] it had 22 households, 6 ploughlands, 13 acres (5.3 ha) of meadow and one mill.

It was in the hundred of Dorchester and the lord and tenant-in-chief was Hawise, wife of Hugh son of Grip.

The politician Sir Francis Ashley was the main landowner here in the early seventeenth century.

[6] Winterborne St Martin was within an electoral ward that bears its name and extends from Winterbourne Abbas in a roughly south-easterly direction to the edge of Upwey.