The Parish is made up of the two villages of Barwick and Stoford, although it is not clear nowadays where one ends and the other starts.
Situated 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Yeovil in the South Somerset district, right on the border with Dorset the Parish has a population of c.1,221 and is home to Yeovil Junction railway station, on the main London to Exeter line.
The earliest signs of habitation in the area were the relics of a Bronze Age burial which were found in 1826, a little to the north of the village of Stoford, which may be a Saxon name derived from Stow-Ford.
Settlement may go back as far as Saxon times, the earliest mention of Barwick being in 1185. In the Middle Ages, Stoford was shown as a new town and in an Inquisition or survey of 1273 there were 74 burgages each paying 10d (ten pence) a year. The total population of the borough in 1273 was probably over 500. Stoford kept its borough status for at least 300 years. A guildhall was mentioned in 1361 and there is proof of a separate borough court. There was still a ‘borough of Stoford’ in the musters of 1569.
An archaeological assessment of Stoford can be found here.