Dunster Castle, Minehead, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

Eighteenth- and 19th-century terraced gardens, partly on medieval castle defences, in a mid- and late 18th-century landscape park laid out with the advice of Richard Phelps, on the site of a medieval park.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Dunster Castle is situated about 2.5 kilometres south-east of Minehead, to the south of the A39 road. The roughly 283 hectare site comprises some 6 hectares of gardens and pleasure grounds around the Castle, and around 277 hectares of park. To the north-east the site is bounded by the A39 road, the mid-20th-century course of which has detached a mixed plantation, Great Firs, from the park. To the east-north-east the site adjoins agricultural land, while to the east and south-east the boundary is formed by a minor road, Park Lane, from which the site is separated by banks and hedges. To the south the site is separated from adjacent agricultural land and woodland by a track which extends west from Park Lane to Bonniton Lane, which forms the western boundary of the site. To the north the site adjoins meadows to the south of the River Avill, while the north-west boundary is formed by Gallox Lane, the River Avill, and the boundaries of domestic properties in the village of Dunster. The site is separated from these properties by brick and stone walls. The registered site includes three outlying areas: Great Firs plantation to the north-east; the site of the Castle kitchen garden, now Village Gardens, to the east and north-east of the village church; and Conygar Wood, about 450 metres north of the Castle, which occupies a prominent hill and forms the setting for Conygar Tower, a mid-18th-century folly. The site is undulating and is crossed from north-west to north-north-east by the River Avill. To the north-west of the river is the Tor, a conical-shaped hill on which the Castle stands and commands wide views in all directions across the village, the park and surrounding countryside, and the coast about 2 kilometres to the north. The park rises to the east and south, while a further conical hill, Conygar Hill to the north of the village, allows reciprocal views to the Castle.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

S and N Buck, Buck’s Antiquities II, (1774)

J Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somersetshire II, (1791), p 13

J Savage, A History of the Hundred of Carhampton (1830)

Gardener’s Magazine, 18 (1842), p 489

Sir H C Maxwell Lyte, Dunster and its Lords 1066-1881 (1882)

Country Life, 14 (14 November 1903), pp 686-95; no 29 (16 July 1987), pp 124-7; no 30 (23 July 1987), pp 102-06; no 22 (31 May 1990), pp 152-5

Sir H C Maxwell Lyte, A History of Dunster and of the families of Mohun and Luttrell (1909)

Victoria History of the County of Somerset II, (1911), p 567

N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (1958), pp 156-9

G Headley and W Meulenkamp, Follies, Grottoes & Garden Buildings (1989), pp 441-2

J Bond, Somerset Parks and Gardens (1998), pp 54-5, 94

T Gray (editor), Travels in Georgian Devon: The illustrated journals of the Reverend John Swete, 1789-1800 III, (1999), pp 62-8

Dunster Castle, Somerset, guidebook, (National Trust 1999)

Maps

J Speed, Somerset-shire Described, 1610

OS 6" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1904
 

Description written: November 2002

Edited: September 2004