A very short distance beyond is the great landslip which fell in 1839, when about fifty acres of the cliff slid more than a hundred feet to the shore beneath, but in such a way that part of an orchard descended with its growing trees, and they continued to flourish at their new level. More wonderful still, two cottages settled down on to the shore, without falling in pieces. The ground began to slide on the night of Christmas Eve, and by the evening of December 26 the great mass had fallen. To the west is a great chasm, and the cliff rises high on the seaward side. Farther east, no cliff rises beyond the chasm, but little hillocks and sand-dunes slope unevenly to the beach. The undercliff has not in the least the barren look of an ordinary bit of waste ground touching the shore, but is covered with grass and thick undergrowth, oaks and hawthorns, and masses of ivy, and beneath them the long spear-like leaves and scarlet-berried pods of the wild-iris.
If one returns to the Axe and begins to follow up its innumerable bends, one arrives opposite the little town of Colyton, which is not quite on the river. Mr Rogers says that the name comes from the British _Collh y tun_, and has the pretty meaning of 'the town where the hazels grow.'
Here is a fine church, chiefly Perpendicular, well known, among other reasons, for a richly carved tomb, on which is the effigy of a very small lady, a coronet on her head and a dog at her feet, with coats of arms hanging above. The figure was always known by the curious name of 'Little Choak-a-bone.' The old story said that the lady was the daughter of Lord Devon and his wife, Princess Katherine, daughter of Edward IV, and that she died because a fish-bone choked her. Now this has been corrected, and it is believed that the monument is of the wife of the fifth Earl of Devon, who lived nearly one hundred years earlier. But no disproof has been brought against the fish-bone!
Close to Colyton are the ruins of an old house of the Courtenays, Colcombe, which has been partly converted into a farmhouse. Here Princess Katherine occasionally lived during her widowhood. Colcombe suffered much in the Civil War, for it was garrisoned by Prince Maurice, who led his troops into several skirmishes with the enemy, and during one of these affairs (it is supposed) the Castle was burned down.