AXMOUTH, a village and a parish in Axminster district, Devon. The village stands at the mouth of the river Axe, under Hawksdown hill, 6 miles SSW of Axminster. It has a post office under Axminster; and is a coastguard station, and a station of the survey commenced in 1837 to detect the differences of level between the English and the British channels. 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; and now has piers for the moorage and discharge of vessels of 150 tons burden. A range of cliffs extending hence east-north-eastward to Lyme Regis has been remarkably subject to landslips; and commands magnificent views of nearly the whole coast of Devon and Dorset. A great landslip occurred on the 25th of 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 ¾ of a mile long; and another, of much smaller extent, occurred on the 3rd of February 1840. The parish comprises 4,533 acres of land, and 190 of water. Real property, £5,631. Pop., 662. Houses, 126. 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. Hallett, Esq.; and belongs now to that gentleman's descendant, W. T. Hallett, Esq., whose residence is a fine mansion, called Stedcombe House. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £230.* Patron, W. T. Hallett, Esq. The church consists of nave, chancel, and south porch; is early English and perpendicular, but has an Anglo-Norman doorway and some wildly grotesque gurgoils; and contains monuments of the Erles and the Halletts.

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