DAWLISH, a town and a parish in Newton-Abbot district, Devon. The town stands at the mouth of a rivulet of its own name, on the coast, and on the South Devon railway, 3 miles NNE of Teignmouth. It was known, at Domesday, as Doelis or Doules; it remained, till about 1790, a small fishing village, ½ a mile up the rivulet; and it is now a handsome, picturcsque, and fashionable watering-place, extending down to the beach, and presenting three sides of a quadraugular area to the sea. It partly occupies a fine valley, flanked by heights; and partly rejoices in a grand cove, about 1½ mile wide, overhung by tunnelled precipices, and terminated on one side by the Langstone Cliffs, on the other by the fantastic rocks called the Parson and Clerk. It is a seat of petty sessions and a coast-guard station; and has a head post office, ‡ a railway station with telegraph, three hotels, two churches, three dissenting chapels, public baths, assembly rooms, billiard and reading rooms, circulating libraries, a literary society, and a pleasure fair on Easter-Monday. The railway station is ornamental; and the railway viaduct across the rivulet has an Egyptian character. The parish church, at the upper end of the town, was rebuilt in 1825, at a cost of nearly £6, 000; and St. Mark's, in Brunswick Place, was built in 1850. The erection of a promenade pier was proposed in 1866. Pop. of the town, 3, 505. Houses, 680. -The parish includes also the hamlets of Cockwood, Middlewood, and Westwood. Acres, 5, 512; of which 495 are water. Real property, £20, 127; of which £324 are in gas-works. Pop., 4, 014. Houses, 795. The property is subdivided. The manor belonged at Domesday to the see of Exeter; and belongs now to the Dean and Chapter. The railway here traverses alternately five short tunnels and four spaces over-hung by lofty cliffs; and was momentarily overwhelmed, at one point, in 1853 by the fall of a mass of about 4, 000 tons, which carried a piece of it into the sea. The living is a vicarage, united with the p. curacy of St. Marks, in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £256.* Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Exeter.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))