The A381 road between Newton Abbot and Totnes runs down the western side of the parish and the main railway line between these two towns forms part of its eastern boundary.

The settlement that is now Abbotskerswell was called Cærswylle in 956, Carsvelle in 1086 and Kareswill in 1242, meaning 'cress spring' from the Old English cærse + wylle.

[1] In the Domesday Book Abbotskerswell was listed as Carsuella in the ancient hundred of Kerswell, and was held by the abbot of Horton Abbey, Dorset.

[4] The village church, dedicated to St Mary, was affected by the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII.

Old treasures, particularly a large badly damaged medieval statue assumed to be of the Virgin and Child,[5] have been found within the church, and work has been undertaken to restore them.

The north aisle is of the Perpendicular period and the western tower has diagonal buttresses and a stair turret in the centre of one side.

Henley's Devonshire Cider was made by a company based in nearby Newton Abbot from apples grown in the extensive orchards around the village, and their presses were here too.

[7] In 1850, according to White's Devonshire Directory: ABBOTSKERSWELL, or Abbot's Carswell, is a pleasant village, two miles S. of Newton Abbot, and has in its parish 433 souls and 1600 acres of land, including several scattered houses and the hamlet of Aller, where there is a paper mill, on a rivulet 1 ½ mile from the church.

A cottage has been converted into a Baptist Chapel; and in the parish is a Quaker's Burial Ground, which was reserved for that purpose by a Mr. Tucket, when he sold Court Barton estate.