Branscombe, a village and a parish in Devonshire. The village stands on the coast, 6 miles E of Sidmouth, and 4 W from Seaton station on the L. & S.W.R. It has a post office under Axminster; money order and. telegraph office, Beer, 2 miles distant. It is a straggling but very pleasant place, and carries on a manufacture of pillow-lace. The parish comprises 3429 acres; population, 742. The manor belonged before the Conquest to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. Edge or Egge, in a valley N of the village, was the residence in the time of Edward III. of the Branscombe family, and thence till 1618 of the Wadhams, the last of whom founded Wadham College in Oxford. Three valleys, flanked by picturesque hills, diverge from the vicinity of the village, and are traversed by streams, which uniting run into the sea at a small bay below the village, called Branscombe Mouth, at which is the coastguard station. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter; net value, £250 with residence. Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. the church is cruciform and partly Norman, partly English, has a central tower, and contains an ancient monument of the Wadham family, with two kneeling effigies. There is also in the same (north) transept a much older one of the Holcombe family, once resident at Hole, now a farmhouse.
