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.

The Wimborne Minster astronomical clock dates back to the early fourteenth century. The clock's case was built in the Elizabethan era, but the face and dial are of a much greater age. The first documents relating to the clock concern repairs carried out in 1409.

In 1593, the clock was removed from the central tower, and moved to its current location in the minster's west tower. The clock's mechanism was replaced in 1695 and the present works were installed in 1792. The display on the clock is based upon the geocentric model, which was not superseded until the advent of heliocentrism in the late 16th century. The Sun rotates in the outer blue ring and points to the hour of day.

On the outside north wall of the minster is a full-size Grenadier, called the Quarterjack, which strikes the quarter hours. The original figure of a monk was replaced during the Napoleonic Wars.