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 to be stripped out as part of the renovations. As part of his work, Salvin appears to have used a number of rolled wrought-iron beams to span the resulting structural gaps in the building, an advanced use of that technology for the time. The house was refurnished with newly bought 16th and 17th-century artwork, two brass Italian cannons and a stuffed polar bear. Alexander Luttrell, who inherited Dunster Castle in 1910, chose to live at East Quantoxhead instead, and it was left empty until his son Geoffrey reoccupied the castle in 1920, redecorating some of the rooms in a contemporary