Since we cannot treat of Ilfracombe without touching upon its ancient history, it had better be done at once, and an end made of it forthwith. To begin with, it is not certain how the name derived. In Saxon times it was “Alfreincombe,” and from that has been hazarded the theory of its having once belonged to Alfred the Great. Then stepped in that eternal factor of the letter H, and it became “Halfrincombe.” I wonder if any contemporary, uncertain in his aspirates, ever called the great monarch, “Halfred”? It is a fearful thought.
Then the place, having been crowned with an H, of course those who should have kept the letter, vulgarly elided it, and the name became “Ilfardcombe,” or “Ilfridecombe,” and so remained until, with the introduction of printing, the style became irrevocably fixed at what it is now.
The town was then nothing more than a few waterside houses down by the harbour, that curious, almost pool-like inlet intended by nature for the purpose, but the place speedily prospered, chiefly by reason of this natural haven, and in 1346 the port was sufficiently wealthy and populous to be able to assist Edward the Third with a contingent of six ships and ninety-six seamen, to help in the French war and the reduction of Calais. That appears to have been the high-water mark of Ilfracombe’s old-time prosperity, for thenceforward Barnstaple and Bideford took up the position of rivals, and wrested away much of its trade.
Little is heard of the town until the beginning of the Civil War. The sentiment of the townsfolk was strongly anti-Royalist, and it occurred, therefore, to Sir Francis Doddington, a Royalist commander who had helped his cause well at Appledore, that it would be the properest thing to teach them a lesson while the success of his party there was still fresh, to serve as a moral lesson here. What happened we may read from a contemporary account, in the _Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer_, September 3rd, 1644. It is couched something in the sarcastic vein: “At a town called Ilford-combe in Devonshire, that saint-like Cavalier, Sir Francis Doddington, set that town on fire, burnt 27 houses in the town, but was beaten out by the townsmen and sailors, and lost many of his men.”