Rapparee Cove is about a kilometre north-west of Hele, between Hillsborough and Ilfracombe. Over a dozen gold coins have been found on the beach here and a large number of human bones were recently found behind the collapsed wall at the back of the beach. These are thought to come from the transport ship London that was wrecked at the entrance to Rapparee Cove in October 1796.

A rapparee is, loosly, an 'Irish bandit'. Rapparee Cove is traditionally associated with the Earl of Rhone festival in Combe Martin, which celebrates the capture of the Earl of Tyrone, said to have landed at Rapparee Cove in the early 17th century after a failed rebellion in Ireland. However, the Earl is known to have escaped to the continent. Furthermore, a rapparee is more specifically an Irish bandit or irregular soldier 'armed with a half-pike or rapary' and was not used until the 1680's, nearly a hundred years after Tyrone's defeat.

The rapparees of Rapparee Cove were probably the bandits or scoundrels, who landed in Ilfracombe in 1685, after the failure of the Monmouth rebellion, and seized a ship, but when pursued were forced to land at Lynmouth and were later captured on Exmoor. The association with the Earl of Tyrone may be because Ilfracombe provided food and shipping in 1585 for 800 soldiers to fight the Tyrone rebellion.

"The name Raparee Cove, at the entrance of the harbour, and the mock hunting of the Earl of Tyrone, yearly celebrated till within a few years, in the adjoining parish of Combmartin, are to be traced up to the great Irish Rebellion of 1598" (Slade-King 1879 p 167)

It is called Rapary on Greenwoods map (or battery?) - but is shown on the east of Hillsborough rather than the west. Rapparee Cove is so-called on the OS map of 1891

"Rapparee - A wild Irish plunderer, so called from his being armed with a rapary or half-pike (Irish rappire, a robber)" (E Cobham Brewer 1898 The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Philadelphia, Henry Artemus 1898 and New York, www.bartleby.com 2000)

Rapparee is from Irish rapaire, plural rapairidhe, meaning short pike. 1 A half-pike (rare) 2 "An Irish pikeman or irregular soldier, of the kind prominent during the war of 1688-92; hence, an Irish robber, bandit or freebooter" (SOED 1987 Vol 2 p 1747)