Place:Seaton, Devon, England

Watchers
NameSeaton
Alt namesFluetasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 85
Flutasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 85
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish, Urban district
Coordinates50.717°N 3.083°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoColyton Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred in which Seaton was located
Seaton and Beer, Devon, Englandcivil parish in which Seaton was situated 1866-1894
East Devon District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality of which Seaton has been a part since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Seaton is a seaside town in the East Devon District of Devon on the south coast of England. It faces onto Lyme Bay, to the west of the mouth of the River Axe with red cliffs to one side and white cliffs on the other. Axmouth and Beer are nearby. A sea wall provides access to the mostly shingle beach stretching for about a mile, and a small harbour.

Seaton sits on the 96-mile (155 km) long Dorset and East Devon Coast, commonly known as the Jurassic Coast. From here it is possible to visit rock strata dating from three geological periods in a 185 million-year ‘geological walk through time’.

Seaton had a population 8,413 at the 2011 UK census, while the Seaton and Beer Urban Area that includes Colyton had an estimated population of 12,815 in 2012.

end of Wikipedia summary

Seaton was part of the ancient division of Devon named the Colyton Hundred. Until the establishment of civil parishes in 1866, Seaton was an ecclesiastical parish and Beer was a chapelry within it. From 1866 until 1894 Seaton and Beer was a single civil parish. In 1894 they were separated and Seaton became an urban district, while Beer became a civil parish within Axminster Rural District.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Seaton.

Image:Axminster RD small.png

Research Tips

(revised Jul 2021)

  • Ordnance Survey Map of Devonshire North and Devonshire South are large-scale maps covering the whole of Devon between them. They show the parish boundaries when Rural Districts were still in existence and before the mergers of parishes that took place in 1935 and 1974. When expanded the maps can show many of the small villages and hamlets inside the parishes. These maps are now downloadable for personal use but they can take up a lot of computer memory.
  • GENUKI has a selection of maps showing the boundaries of parishes in the 19th century. The contribution from "Know Your Place" on Devon is a huge website yet to be discovered in detail by this contributor.
  • Devon has three repositories for hands-on investigation of county records. Each has a website which holds their catalog of registers and other documents.
  • There is, however, a proviso regarding early records for Devon. Exeter was badly hit in a "blitz" during World War II and the City Library, which then held the county archives, was burnt out. About a million books and historic documents went up in smoke. While equivalent records--particularly wills--are quite easy to come by for other English counties, some records for Devon and surrounding counties do not exist.
  • Devon Family History Society Mailing address: PO Box 9, Exeter, EX2 6YP, United Kingdom. The society has branches in various parts of the county. It is the largest Family History Society in the United Kingdom. The website has a handy guide to each of the parishes in the county and publishes the registers for each of the Devon dioceses on CDs.
  • This is the home page to the GENUKI Devon website. It has been updated since 2015 and includes a lot of useful information on each parish.
  • Devon has a Online Parish Clerk (OPC) Project which can be reached through GENUKI. Only about half of the parishes have a volunteer contributing local data. For more information, consult the website, especially the list at the bottom of the homepage.
  • Magna Britannia, Volume 6 by Daniel Lysons and Samuel Lysons. A general and parochial history of the county. Originally published by T Cadell and W Davies, London, 1822, and placed online by British History Online. This is a volume of more than 500 pages of the history of Devon, parish by parish. It is 100 years older than the Victoria County Histories available for some other counties, but equally thorough in its coverage. Contains information that may have been swept under the carpet in more modern works.
  • There is a cornucopia of county resources at Devon Heritage. Topics are: Architecture, Census, Devon County, the Devonshire Regiment, Directory Listings, Education, Genealogy, History, Industry, Parish Records, People, Places, Transportation, War Memorials. There are fascinating resources you would never guess that existed from those topic titles. (NOTE: There may be problems reaching this site. One popular browser provider has put a block on it. This may be temporary, or it may be its similarity in name to the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Seaton, Devon. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.