The parish of Dowlish Wake was part of the South Petherton Hundred.

The village is situated on Dowlish Brook, which is crossed by a 17th-century packhorse bridge (widened in the 1990s) and a road bridge from the 18th century.
There was a flour mill on the brook in the 17th century, but only the Mill House survives today.
Until the early 1990s parts of the village were regularly cut off by floodwaters between two fords which cross the main road; however, this has largely been prevented by recent drainage improvements.

The village was a centre for the manufacture of silk and there are the remains of several limestone quarries.
It was on the route of the Chard Canal, which was built around 1835–40 and intended as part of a ship canal between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel, but this was never built.

In 2004, a stone in a village garden, used by a widow to mark the grave of her pet cat, was identified by the village potter as a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon carving of St Peter.

The sports pavilion on the Lawrence Kellett Recreation Field was rebuilt in 2007, but then destroyed by arson in October 2016.
A designated committee is working to raise funds to rebuild it again.
The parish of Dowlish Wake was part of the South Petherton Hundred.
The village is situated on Dowlish Brook, which is crossed by a 17th-century packhorse bridge (widened in the 1990s) and a road bridge from the 18th century. There was a flour mill on the brook in the 17th century, but only the Mill House survives today. Until the early 1990s parts of the village were regularly cut off by floodwaters between two fords which cross the main road; however, this has largely been prevented by recent drainage improvements.
The village was a centre for the manufacture of silk and there are the remains of several limestone quarries. It was on the route of the Chard Canal, which was built around 1835–40 and intended as part of a ship canal between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel, but this was never built.
In 2004, a stone in a village garden, used by a widow to mark the grave of her pet cat, was identified by the village potter as a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon carving of St Peter.
The sports pavilion on the Lawrence Kellett Recreation Field was rebuilt in 2007, but then destroyed by arson in October 2016. A designated committee is working to raise funds to rebuild it again.
Dowlish Wake