Houses with a History 
DUNSTER CASTLE 
By F. ACLAND HOOD 
D UNSTER Castle is one of the most interesting, 
as it is certainly one of the most beautifully 
and romantically situated places in England. 
It stands on a wooded, isolated hill or tor, about 200 
feet high, rising from the level plain, which extends 
between it and the Bristol Channel and it is backed 
by higher hills, some wild and heather-covered, others 
beautifully wooded. At its foot lies the picturesque 
little town, with its whitewashed and timbered 
houses, and projecting tiled roofs and dormer win¬ 
dows, with the old Luttrell Arms Inn, now somewhat 
modernized outside but still preserving its fine oak 
room and gabled porch, and with the very quaint 
octagonal market place, built as a yarn market by 
George Luttrell about 1590 and still hearing the 
marks of a cannonball, fired from the castle during 
the siege of 1646. 
The castle was one of the most important fortresses 
in the West of England. It consisted of two parts, 
the upper and the lower ward, due to the two natural 
platforms into which the hill was divided. On the 
flat, oval summit of the hill stood the Keep; the 
naturally steep sides were made so smooth that a 
direct attack by an enemy was almost impossible. 
The lower platform, about 50 feet beneath, on which 
was built the lower ward, is semicircular in form, the 
ground on the east side falling suddenly in a low cliff 
supported by a retaining wall, below which the slope, 
now terraced by paths and clothed with trees, descends 
to the foot of the hill. A cleverly engineered drive, 
DUNSTER CASTLE FROM THE TOWN 
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