[2] The clifftop but well set back village developed as the main settlement, within its ecclesiastical parish Combpyne,[3] which otherwise has only a few houses by its church and scattered farms.

Adjoining the small fields to the south are the coastal cliffs which lie above the Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliff Nature Reserve that forms part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

It is a green wilderness littoral forest strip with many rugged parts and ruins of farmhouses formed largely from a landslip (major cliff erosion) in 1839.

No public right of way links Rousdon directly, nor any adjacent area, to the path below along Charton Bay which links the foot of the Axe estuary south of Axmouth (at the western edge of Seaton Seaton to Ware), immediately south-west of Lyme Regis, on the Dorset border [citation needed].

The Undercliff has most of the trees of the south of the parish, in the northern end, Pynecomb copses grow increasingly towards the north.