Destination Ilfracombe by Simon Heptinstall

Woolacombe was fine, Croyde alright if you stayed in the car park... but dad wouldn't let us go anywhere near Ilfracombe.

Growing up in a middle class family in Devon in the sixties I was kept away from anything deemed 'lower class' - and the north coast resort of Ilfracombe was definitely that.

It was simply an old-fashioned Victorian seaside town providing cheap holidays for coachloads of factory workers. Ilfracombe lacked the 'Riviera glamour' of Torquay or Sidmouth. It had nothing, said my dad, but chips, slot machines and 'dreadful common people'.

Forty years later, dear old dad would turn in his grave to hear that Britain's most famous living artist - who made his name exhibiting a dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde - has opened a million pound restaurant on Ilfracombe harbourside.

He would probably have said that Ilfracombe and Damien Hirst deserve each other. But I was intrigued: does this mean Ilfracombe is changing into a stylish arty and foodie place, like St Ives and Padstow combined? I drove down to Devon to investigate.

As I rounded a corner in the hills above the town, I saw one thing definitely hasn't changed - Ilfracombe's remarkable geography. It was one of the first seaside resorts 150 years ago and still has Regency, Victorian and Edwardian streets stretched across a complicated map of headlands, rocky coves, inlets, steep hills and wooded valleys.

The Bristol Channel was calm right out to the island of Lundy on the horizon and the sun glinted on the old slate roof of St Nicholas' - the combined chapel and lighthouse on Lantern Hill that has guarded the entrance to Ilfracombe's pretty little harbour for 600 years.

Perhaps views like this helped persuade Damien to choose this unfashionable town for his expensive and risky restaurant project. The controversial artist often stays with his family in an old farmhouse he owns near Combe Martin, a neighbouring village.

Ten years ago Damien bought a small Ilfracombe pub, The White Hart that had been closed for years. Since then he has transformed it into 'No 11 The Quay', which is the smartest and priciest restaurant in north Devon. From the sandblasted façade to the fabulous sea and harbour views from the tables, it seems worth every penny.

The food is superb, fine contemporary cuisine. Chef Graham Brundle is a local, returning home after working at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and as personal chef to the King of Jordan and Richard Branson. Downstairs is a stylish tapas bar with fish décor by Damien. It’s an attempt to make the place more friendly to passersby. But there's no getting away from the fact that No 11 is like a posh pricey London restaurant dropped in the middle of a town more used, as my dad correctly noted, to chips.

No 11 is right next door to a fudge shop and a few doors from a greasy café. At around £50 a head without drinks, I expect most holidaymakers, like me, will gawk through the windows trying to spot a celebrity but run a mile when they see the prices. From what I saw, it's around twice as expensive as any other place to eat in Ilfracombe.

If Damien's eatery isn't to end up dead in the water, like one of his famous sharks, Ilfracombe will have to duplicate what happened in Padstow. That quiet little Cornish fishing village has been transformed thanks to TV chef's Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant.

Local tourism officials are already suggesting, in their normal gobbledegook way, that 'North Devon is the new North Cornwall'. But it took me a while to find signs that Ilfracombe's slot-machines, chip shops and cheap guest houses are going to turn into wine bars, delicatessens and boutique hotels.

The most obvious evidence of advancement is the distinctive modern architecture of the Landmark Theatre. Its twin cones - likened to Madonna's bra when it opened in 1988 - have transformed the seafront Runnymeade Gardens. Unfortunately the new theatre's summer schedule features a beer festival, line dancing and a model railway exhibition. Damien's customers aren't likely to be on their way to the theatre.

But just around the corner, I stumbled into the stylish Café Blue. It has the whitewashed walls, glass bricks and shiny aluminium furniture of the coolest continental cafes.

Owner Jamie Mclintock is another Ilfracombe boy who returned. Seven years ago Jamie and wife Zoe, in a lifestyle change worth a TV series, gave up their office jobs in the Midlands and came home to buy a beach. Amazingly the one-and-a-half mile stretch of coast was for sale for nine years before they snapped it up.

The Mclintocks have already turned the run-down Tunnel Beach area into Ilfracombe's best attraction. The tunnels were cut through cliffs in 1823 to allow access to rocky coves. Ilfracombe Sea Bathing Company built a driftwood-powered pump to send sea water back into a smart spa bath house.

Ilfracombe became the third most popular spot in the country for 'taking the waters' - literally drinking a cup of seawater for its supposed health benefits.

Jamie and Zoe have beautifully renovated the tunnels and safe tidal bathing pools beyond. "We wanted to create something high quality," said Jamie.

They've succeeded: their beach is due to receive its first Blue Flag this summer, their café is one of the best for miles and they've turned the tunnels into an intriguing attraction with dozens of signs explaining the weirdest parts of its history. Everywhere there are quoted passages from Victorian newspaper articles about the site, like the advice to beach-going ladies that "corsets should be left at home" while gentlemen were warned that "great care must be taken not to splash the ladies".

My favourite poster concerned the bugler who was stationed on the rocky outcrop between the gentlemen's and ladies bathing areas. His job was to blow an alarm to the ladies if any of the gentlemen strayed too close.

After that I started spotting other heartening signs around Ilfracombe's narrow streets. An old police station has been turned into a smart modern restaurant called Gendarmerie. Next door is another tapas bar. There are a couple of art galleries now too - although their seascapes and pottery probably aren't Damien's sort of thing.

Everywhere the old hotels are being converted into self-catering flats and luxury apartments. Demolition crews have flattened amusement arcades, a smelly old petrol station near the harbour and a giant holiday camp.

Yet there is still no hotel more highly rated than two stars in Ilfracombe at the moment, so I stayed at Broomhill Art Hotel ten miles south. This eccentric old Victorian house in a secluded wooded valley has an amazing 10-acre garden dotted with more than 300 sculptures by 60 different artists. Inside there are paintings and sculptures everywhere, including a full-sized gallery.

Other promising signs are the new harbourside aquarium, opened three years ago by former London zoo-worker Lawrence Raybone in a deserted lifeboat station. It's another high quality attraction, focussing just on fish found within a few miles of Ilfracombe. Lawrence has been asked to build a fish tank in Damien's restaurant - but denied it will feature any dead sharks.

So Ilfracombe seems to be on the verge of becoming a trendy resort for the first time for possibly 100 years. So would I let my own children go there? Of course I would. And they could even take me to Damien's new restaurant, as long as they pay.