Axmouth, a village and a parish in Devon. The village stands at the mouth of the river Axe, under Hawksdown Hill, 6 miles SSW of Axminster, and 1 mile from Seaton station on the L. & S.W.R. It has a post office under Axminster; money order and telegraph office, Seaton. Acreage, 4244; population, 615. A coastguard station, with houses for the chief officer and the men and their families, was erected in 1883. A harbour here gave refuge, in ancient times, to vessels under stress of weather; was much improved in the early part of the 17th century, but is now disused. A range of cliffs extending hence east-north-eastward to Lyme-Regis has been remarkably subject to landslips. A great landslip occurred on the 25th December, 1839, destroying two cottages and 45 acres of fine arable land, and forming a chasm 300 feet or more broad, 150 feet deep, and 1/2 of a mile long; and another, of much smaller extent, occurred on the 3rd February, 1840. The parish comprises 4533 acres of land, and 190 of water. The manor was given by Rivers, Earl of Devon, to the Abbey of St. Mary, Mountbarrow, in Normandy; passed, at the suppression of alien monasteries, to the Abbey of Sion; went, at the final dissolution of monasteries, to Catherine, queen of Henry VIII.; was granted, in 1552, to Walter Erle, Esq.; passed from him to Sir W. Yonge; was purchased, in 1691, by R. Hallet, Esq., and in 1890 by S. Sanders Stephens, Esq., who now resides at Stedcombe Manor. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter; net value, £180. The church consists of nave, chancel, and south aisle, which is Norman; is Early English and Perpendicular, but has an Anglo-Norman doorway and some wildly grotesque gargoyles, and contains monuments of the Erles and the Halletts.
