Ilfracombe has been settled since the Iron
Age, when the Dumnonii Celts established a hill fort on the dominant hill,
Hillsborough (formerly Hele's Barrow). The origin of the town's name has two
possible sources. The first is that it is a derivative of the Anglo-Saxon
Alfreinscoma - by which name it was noted in the Liber Exoniensis of 1086. The
translation of this name (from Walter William Skeat of the department of Anglo
Saxon at Cambridge University) means the "Valley of the sons of
Alfred". The second origin is that the name Ilfracombe was derived from
Norse illf (bad), Anglo-Saxon yfel (evil
