AXMOUTH

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)]

"AXMOUTH, a parish in the hundred of Axminster, in the county of Devon, 6 miles to the S.W. of Axminster, its post town. It lies on the coast of the English Channel, at the mouth of the river Axe. It is chiefly a fishing village. A coastguard station is established here. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Exeter, of the value of £230, in the gift of J. H. Hallett, Esq. The church was considered a cell to the abbey of Mountborough, in Normandy, to which the manor of Axmouth was granted in the reign of Henry II. At Christmas, 1839, this village was the scene of an extraordinary and alarming landslip. A chasm was formed nearly a mile and a half long, between 200 and 300 feet in depth, and from 400 to 600 feet in breadth. Loud noises, as of crushing or rending, sometimes near sometimes more distant, accompanied the convulsion, which lasted the whole day. The sea bottom was raised, and a new reef formed nearly 50 feet long. The chasm has a curving direction, convex towards the north, or landwards. The slip was probably occasioned by the mining effects of springs in the porous substratum of red sandstone, locally called "fox-mould.""