In 1086 in the Domesday Book Yetminster was recorded as Etiminstre;[2] it had 76 households, 26 ploughlands, 42 acres (17 ha) of meadow and 2 mills.

[9] Records from 1848 indicate Yetminster's degree of self-sufficiency as a community; nearly 20 trades and crafts were conducted in the village, including a glazier, a saddler, several shoe and boot makers, a tailor and a maltster.

[11] Many of the buildings still standing in the village were built from the local limestone between the end of the 16th and the middle of the 18th centuries,[12] resulting in an unusually unified architectural appearance.

[18] The population of the parish in the censuses between 1921 and 2001 is shown in the table below: Yetminster does not lie on a main road and experiences mostly local traffic.

As well as the expected local store and pub, Yetminster still possesses a variety of village amenities and services, including a GP surgery and health centre, and a sports/social club with playing grounds and tennis court.

Yetminster was the birthplace of Benjamin Jesty (c.1736–1816), a farmer who lived in the village for much of his life, who is notable for his early experiment in inducing immunity against smallpox using deliberate inoculation with the less virulent cowpox.

Unlike Edward Jenner, a medical doctor who is given broad credit for developing the smallpox vaccine in 1796, Jesty did not publicise his findings, even though they were made some twenty years earlier in 1774.