The name means 'winter river (i.e. one dry in summer) belonging to Gunnora de la Mare', who held the manor in 1250, according to the Book of Fees in the National Archives.

[7] The London and South Western Railway's line between Andover and Salisbury opened in 1857, following the Bourne valley and passing just east of Winterbourne Gunner village.

[8] There has been a military research and training site southeast of the village, beyond the railway line, since the First World War.

The low, unbuttressed twelfth-century tower is at the west end and is rendered and whitewashed, and topped with a pyramidal tiled roof.

The interior has a fourteenth-century roof over the nave with arch-braced trussed rafters with a moulded central tie beam.