Brixham

The Brixham sailing trawler was a type of wooden fishing vessel built in the town of Brixham between the 1880s and 1920s. More than three hundred were built and sailed out of Brixham, a fishing port on the south Devon coast. Brixham was once home to one of the largest wooden trawler fleets in the world. Today, only a few of the original boats remain.

Resort and seaport in Devon, England; population (2001) 17,500. It is situated on the southern side of Tor Bay, 3 km/2 mi east of Churston. Brixham is a busy fishing port.

In 1958 a cave containing Palaeolithic remains was discovered on Windmill Hill, Brixham. The town was originally two settlements – Cowtown and Fishtown. In the Middle Ages, it was the largest fishing port in southwest England. William of Orange, who is commemorated by a statue, landed at Brixham in 1688 before becoming William III. Limestone quarrying was another important industry in the past, and ochre was also found in the area. The ochre was used to make a paint, invented in Brixham in 1845, that stopped cast iron from rusting.

Features include the Brixham Heritage Museum (1958), which is devoted to local maritime history and the history of the Coastguard Service. The main church in the town is St. Mary's, built on an ancient Celtic burial ground. The original wooden Saxon church was replaced by a stone Norman one that was built over in 1360. Henry Francis Lyte, the clergyman who wrote the hymn ‘Abide with me’, was a vicar in the area during the early 19th century.