Rousdon is a village in East Devon off the A3052 road between Colyford and Lyme Regis in Dorset. The clifftop but well set back village developed as the main settlement, within its ecclesiastical parishCombpyne, which otherwise has only a few houses by its church and scattered farms. It did so north of Sir Henry Peek's grand house, billiard house and separate stable courtyard chiefly in the early 19th century. A boarding school called Allhallows moved there from Honiton in 1937 and closed in 1998. Adjoining the small fields to the south are the coastal cliffs then The UndercliffNature Reserve part of the Jurassic CoastWorld Heritage Site as it is so labelled in many maps. It is a green wilderness littoral forest strip with many rugged parts and ruins of farmhouses formed largely from a landslip in 1839. The South West Coast Path crosses it for some miles. No public right of way links Rousdon directly, nor any adjacent area, to the path below along Charton Bay which links the foot of the Axe estuary south of diminutive Axmouth to Ware, immediately south-west of Lyme Regis, on the Dorset border.
Layout
Rousdon is a small linear hamlet laid out to the north of the A3052. The village comprises a small number of dwellings arranged around the A3052 and a private lane, School Lane, a short distance further to the north of Peek Hall. The village also has a number of business within it such as the Rousdon Village Bakery and several car repair garages. Between these is a new build development on the site of a former water tower which forms holiday rental accommodation. Five fields at the heart of the village, south of the main street and around the touring park to the north are lined with mature trees, but surrounding land is intensively agricultural and has modest or narrow hedgerows around most fields. The Undercliff has most of the trees of the south of the parish, in the northern end, Pynecomb copses grow increasingly towards the north. Horton near Uplyme to the far north-east is still well-forested.
History
The parish and manor were anciently known over time as: Dona but later Dune, la Dune, Doune, Rawesdon, Doune Rauf, Doune Rafe, Downraff, Rowston in Axmouth, Rowston alias Downe Ralfe, Rowsedown, etc. The Devon historian Risdon called it Rowsedown, whilst his contemporary Pole called it Doune Raph. All of these suggest a person name, with the later addition of a Saxon possessive "s" and down being as the word does mean in English for place name endings i.e. its celtic sense dūn, hill.
