Seaton, Devon

Seaton is a village on the south coast of England in the county of Devon. It belongs to East Devon District and counted 7111 inhabitants in 2004.

Location

Seaton is located on the English Channel coast, west of the mouth of the River Axe with red cliffs to one side and white cliffs on the other. The village is located approximately 37 kilometers east of the city of Exeter, 15 kilometers east of Sidmouth and about 12 kilometers west of Lyme Regis.

History

A farming village existed here already 4000 years before the Romans, and there were four Iron Age hill forts near.

The original Anglo- Saxon settlement was called Fluta or Fleet and was apparently renamed in the 13th century. The beginning of the modern era witnessed Seaton as a quiet fishing village before it was discovered in the 19th century for tourism.

The village

The place has a wide gravel beach and a small harbor at the mouth of the river. The Axe Valley runs inland to Colyton Seaton Tramway which, an attraction for tourists and day-trippers.

Geology

The coastline of East Devon and Dorset are among the natural wonders of the world. From Orcombe Point to Old Harry Rocks extends a 155 km long coastline, which has been declared as the first natural landscape in England by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Seaton is a "Gateway Town" to the so-called Jurassic Coast.

The rock layers along the Jurassic Coast are tilted slightly to the east. Therefore, the oldest part of the coast is found in the western area, progressively younger rocks forming the cliffs to the east. The nature of revelations along the coast reveal a continuous sequence of resulting in Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous geological structures and present about 185 million years of Earth's history.

• See also list of places on the Jurassic Coast