Dunster Castle front and square towers, set within the older castle walls and overlooked by the keep above. The building was decorated in the latest styles, including ornamental plaster ceilings. The project ran almost three times over budget, costing Luttrell more than £1,200. In the 1640s the English Civil War broke out between the supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. Thomas Luttrell, George's eldest son, initially supported Parliament and after the outbreak of war William Russell, the Duke of Bedford and Parliamentary commander in Devon and Somerset, ordered him to increase the garrison at Dunster to resist a potential Royalist attack.
Dunster Castle sold the castle back to Geoffrey in 1954. His son Colonel Walter Luttrell lived away from Dunster, and following the death of his mother – the last Luttrell to live in the property – gave the castle and most of its contents to the National Trust in 1976. Dunster Castle is operated by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. Little remains of the medieval castle except for the Great Gatehouse and the remains of several towers in the Lower Ward; the heart of the modern castle today is the much altered 17th-century manor house. The key features of the