Wimborne Minster is a small town named after a monastery.

The monastery was founded around 705 by St Cuthburga in a region that was probably only sparsely populated at the time. St Walpurga was educated and spent 26 years here before following the missionary call of her uncle, St Boniface, to Germany. At this time, a men's monastery was also built adjacent to the abbey. Over the next hundred years, the abbey and monastery grew in size and importance.

In 871, King Æthelred I of Wessex, Alfred the Great's brother, was buried in the abbey, which brought the abbey royal honours. The nunnery was destroyed by the Danes in 1013 and never rebuilt, though the main abbey building survived. In 1043 Edward the Confessor founded a college of canons, The minster then was remodelled and rebuilt by the Normans between 1120 and 1180, to support that institution.

It can be assumed that by then a town centre had already formed in the immediate vicinity of the abbey church, which grew steadily in the years that followed. A school open to the public was opened in Wimborne Minster around 1496, followed by one of the first chained libraries in the country around 1686.