Barford St.Martin lies about 6 miles west of Salisbury on the northern bank of the River Nadder, in the south of the county. The earliest mention of the village is in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Bereford; the meaning is ‘Barley ford’ – a river crossing which could carry a wagon laden with corn. ‘St. Martin’, from the dedication of the church, had been added by 1304, thus distinguishing it from Barford in Downton parish.

The modern village is sited on a bend of the A30 road from Salisbury to Shaftesbury (Dorset) where the road turns sharply across the river over a hump-backed bridge. The earlier important route was the east – west road from Salisbury to Dinton, Teffont and Chilmark. The present main road came into being in 1788 when the old turnpike from Salisbury to Shaftesbury was allowed to expire and a new Act turnpiked the easier route through Barford to Whitesheet Hill.

This was a fairly typical chalk valley parish with an area of arable and meadow land in the valley bottom and pasture land on rising ground to the north towards Grovely Wood. The inhabitants of Barford and Great Wishford were given the right to gather ‘snapping’ wood in Grovely and on Oak Apple Day (29th May) to gather oak boughs, decorate their churches with some, and take others in procession to Salisbury Cathedral where they laid claim to their ancient rights in front of the high altar. Today the ceremony is only observed in Great Wishford.

There are about 240 houses in the parish and they range from the Old Rectory and Little Orchard, originally of the 15th century, East End Farmhouse of around 1600, several houses and cottages of the 17th and 18th centuries, a few of the 19th and modern housing from the 1950s. To the north of the village is Hamshill Ditches which comprise extensive earthworks with enclosures, ditches and many house platforms. This was a large settlement site of the Iron Age and Roman periods which had a large field system around it.

The soil in the parish is mainly chalk and the chief farming has been arable and pasture, mainly for sheep.

Today Box is best-known for its Brunel-designed Box railway tunnel and the large quantities of fine-quality stone that were exploited after the tunnel had been dug. But this is modern history from around 1840 to the present day and occupation here dates back at least to Roman times. It is quite a large parish with several settlements, apart from the village of Box, within its boundaries.

The parish is bisected diagonally by the steep-sided By Brook valley with settlements on the higher ground on either side. Although the By Brook would have been an early communication route later main routes by-passed the village of Box until 1761. Until then the Chippenham to Bath road followed a route to the south of the town, leaving Pickwick, near Corsham, passing through Chapel Plaister to the crossroads, now known as Box Five Ways. From there it took the route through Blue Vein and over King’s Down to Bathford. In 1761 the road through Box was turnpiked under the Bricker’s Barn Roads Trust, creating a more direct route (the present A4).