If there was a reinvention league for British seaside resorts, the once-prosperous Victorian town of Ilfracombe on the North Devon coast would probably be near the bottom. It has has been engaged in a 40-year battle for reinvention from the time that cheap package holidays first became widely available.

The best place to look for signs of change in Ilfracombe is Torrs Park, a steep residential street winding away from the seafront. There is already one boutique B&B on the road - Westwood, an excellent small hotel taken over by a couple of London émigrés. It is definitely more Cape Cod than fish and chips. Next door, another B&B has been snapped up, and the makeover could be yet more dramatic given the identity of the new owner: Damien Hirst. The artist already owns a large house in the North Devon countryside and the restaurant Number 11 The Quay - hitherto the main evidence of Ilfracombe's reinvention. That he is said to have paid £450,000 for the Torrs Park property has confirmed local suspicions that Hirst plans to emulate the West Country ventures of the chefs Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein. In Padstow, Stein took a similarly unglamorous but beautifully situated fishing village and created “Padstein”; down the coast, Oliver has opened Fifteen Cornwall in Watergate Bay.

“Suspicions” may make it sound as if the folk of Ilfracombe are celebrity-averse and grumbling about the prospect of Kate Moss wandering around the quay in hotpants. Not a bit of it. One estate agent enthusiastically passes on a rumour that Robbie Williams is interested in an apartment in a converted hotel project. Close by, in Appledore, the Jackson family have their high-profile rented barn. Nearby Braunton's claim to fame is that the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star was written there. For an area used to seeing itself described as quiet, obscure and even slightly depressed, this part of the Devon coast needs all the starriness it can get.

Ilfracombe is one of those resorts that had a sparkling 19th century and a gloomy 20th. The evidence of prosperous Victorian gaiety remains in the housing stock and the public buildings. The town is wonderfully located between the moors and the sea, but it lacks a proper beach - unless you count the bathing pools, reached by an ingenious network of tunnels constructed by Welsh miners in the 1820s. As well as the decline in the traditional bucket-and-spade holiday, the town had to absorb an extensive programme of inner-city relocation the 1990s. The town's image, appearance and crime rates suffered.

BACKGROUND

• The cost of a sea view

• Bargains on the coast

• FOCUS ON . . . TRURO

• Do floods scupper sales?

• Once more unto the beach

Seaside house prices soar

City-dwellers driving up property prices by the sea

• The boom town rocks

BACKGROUND

• From winos to wine bars

BACKGROUND

• Ramsgate rules

• Shoreham gets trendy

• The coast’s next wave

• House Hunter: Sideways to Brighton

• A change in the tide

The new century started more promisingly, with the unveiling of a regeneration plan in 2001. Aided by the Hirst effect, the town began to attract investors looking for the next West Coast hotspot. The opening of the Taw Bridge near Barnstaple in 2007 made access to Cornwall and rest of the North Devon coast much easier. A new ferry link across the Bristol Channel to South Wales is planned, and the harbour is to be redeveloped. But commuters will not find Ilfracombe particularly convenient. The route to the M5 is protected by Exmoor, and Bristol is 1 hours away. In effect, Ilfracombe is a change-of-life destination pitched at second-home owners and those who want to try out a new life in the country.

There is a range of properties to attract these buyers, from isolated country cottages to swish penthouses to imposing Victorian townhouses born at the time of Ilfracombe's greatest prosperity. Properties at the top of the market are in nearby Woolacombe, where a detached house with a view over its fine, long beach - frequently awarded the prize of Britain's best - commands £750,000. In Ilfracombe itself, five or six-bedroom properties in half an acre have been expected to sell for £600,000; for a detached three-bedroom house, £375,000. For pop stars and anyone else looking at one of the high-profile hotel conversions in Ilfracombe, such as the Granville, two-bedroom apartments sold well around the £250,000 mark.

Karl Seeley, of the estate agent Bond Oxborough Phillips, is commendably frank about the town's immediate prospects. “It's a long-term investment. You should look at five to ten years, then you'll see some really dramatic improvements in the town,” he says. The high street is anything but Anytown UK, and while some campaigners may applaud the absence of the usual high street chains, some settlers may find the drive to the nearest supermarket irksome. Parking for the shops isn't easy either.

The local property market is currently flatter than a windless day in the Bristol Channel. But places such as Ilfracombe may be able to count themselves as members of the silver lining club if the prediction that many Britons will reject foreign holidays and take a break at home comes true.

North Devon has an enormous amount to commend it to a “blow-in”: walking, surfing beaches, some of the country's best golf courses (Saunton Golf Club and Royal North Devon Golf Club are both near by), and much less of the seasonal racket that you find in either Newquay or St Ives. Perhaps what Ilfracombe needs most is a new brand. Padstein did it for Padstow, but Hirstville or Damienstown don't sound quite right. Perhaps Half Shark Bay will do the trick.

Tale of two towns

Property prices in Ifracombe have risen 61 per cent over the past five years to an average of £192,362, according to Halifax . Prices are up 0.2 per cent in the past 12 months.

Prices are an average £356,922 in Padstow - up 7 per cent in a year, and 72 per cent over five.

Property in Ilfracombe now costs on average £148 a sq ft - compared with £272 in Padstow, Hometrack data shows.

A detached home in Ilfracombe costs on average £271,800 and an apartment £130,000.

In Padstow a detached house costs £544,000 on average and an apartment £392,500.

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