 Cheddar is recognised as a village . The adjacent settlement of Axbridge , although only about a third the population of Cheddar , is a town . This apparently illogical situation is explained by the relative importance of the two places in historic times . While Axbridge grew in importance as a centre for cloth manufacturing in the Tudor period and gained a charter from King John , Cheddar remained a more dispersed mining and dairy @-@ farming village . Its population grew with the arrival of the railways in the Victorian era and the advent of tourism . 
