Dunster Castle evidence of a fortification at Dunster was an Anglo-Saxon "burgh". This was built on the summit of the hill and was possibly intended to protect the region against sea-borne raiders; by the mid-11th century it was controlled by a local nobleman called Aelfric. In 1066 the Normans invaded south-east England, defeating the English forces at the battle of Hastings: in the aftermath of the victory, William the Conqueror entrusted the conquest of the south-west of England to his half-brother Robert of Mortain. Expecting stiff resistance, Robert marched west into Somerset, supported by forces under Walter of Douai, who entered from
Feudal barony of Dunster (born 1932). Julian Fownes Luttrell (born 1932), younger brother, living in 2015, who rents from the Crown Estate the Home Farm of Dunster Castle with 330 acres situated below the Castle Tor, and lives nearby at Thorncombe, at the foot of the Quantocks. He did not fully agree with his elder brother's decision to donate the estate to the National Trust, "but didn't question the right that the castle belonged to him". In 1956 he was a joint founder, with his former army comrade Sir Neville Bowman-Shaw (a Deputy Lieutenant for Bedfordshire, knighted by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for exports),