Dowlish Wake is 2mi S of Ilminster and 5mi NE of Chard, Somerset. The hamlet centres on the Dowlish Brook. The pre-Saxon place-name ‘Dowlish’, cognate with ‘Dawlish’ (Devon) and ‘Dulais’ (Wales), means ‘black stream’ (so, as so often, ‘Dowlish Brook’ is tautological). The qualifier, added in the 12thc, denotes ownership by that family. This very quiet parish, folded into gentle hills and serviced only by narrow lanes, lies in transitional terrain between heavily cultivated arable to the N based on the Yeovil Sands of central South Somerset and the more pastoral land to the S on Lower Lias soils.

The church of St Andrew lies on Yeovil Sands between 70-75m above OD on the N slope above the stream 200m distant, about 1mi from Moolham quarry, a source of much local building-stone, and about 1.5mi from the church of St Mary in Ilminster, the local ecclesiastical centre. The church has a chancel, crossing with tower, NE chapel, nave and N aisle, S porch and NE vestry. The font, fomerly in the lost church of St John the Baptist, West Dowlish, is the only Romanesque feature in the church.

DB combines the entries for West Dowlish and Dowlish Wake, when both manors were held by the Bishop of Coutances, whose tenant was William de Moncels. In 1284 the overlord was the Earl of Lincoln.

The font design is unusual. The official listing simply describes it as 11th or 12thc. The tooling is very rough; one wonders if it is necessariy post-Conquest.