Dunster Dunster Dunster is a village, civil parish and former manor within the English county of Somerset, today just within the north-eastern boundary of the Exmoor National Park. It lies on the Bristol Channel coast south-southeast of Minehead and northwest of Taunton. The United Kingdom Census of 2011 recorded a parish population of 817. Iron Age hillforts testify to occupation of the area for thousands of years. The village grew up around Dunster Castle which was built on the Tor by the Norman warrior William I de Moyon (d. post 1090) shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Castle is
Dunster Dovecote It would originally have belonged to the Benedictine Priory of Dunster which was a cell of Bath Abbey. Domestic pigeons were kept to provide squabs a luxury food from the breast meat of young pigeons. From the 12th century until 1619, only lords of the manor and parish priests were allowed to keep them. The priory was abolished in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, and property belonging to it was sold to the Luttrell family of Dunster Castle. In the 18th century the floor level and door were raised among several major alterations. The lower tiers of nest