Dunster Castle Castle and most of its contents to the National Trust, which operates it as a tourist attraction. It is a Grade I listed building and scheduled monument. Dunster Castle was positioned on a steep, high hill, sometimes called the Tor, overlooking the village of Dunster in Somerset. During the early medieval period the sea reached the base of the hill, close to the mouth of the River Avill, offering a natural defence and making the village an inland port. Several Iron Age hillforts were built close to Dunster, including Bat's Castle, Black Ball Camp and Grabbist Hill, but the earliest
Dunster Castle left in the castle grounds, the remaining servants had little to do. John's brother Henry inherited in 1857, but he too lived in London rather than at Dunster. George Luttrell inherited the castle in 1867 and began an extensive modernisation, backed by the considerable income from the Dunster estates – in a period of agricultural boom in England, the estates were producing £22,000 in revenue a year (£1.49 million at 2010 prices). It was fashionable during the mid-Victorian period to remodel existing castles to produce what was felt to be a more consistent Gothic or sometimes Picturesque appearance and George,