Luttrell Arms, Dunster

The Luttrell Arms, Dunster was rebuilt from the ruins of the Ship inn, itself on the site of and incorporating part of  three 15th-century houses. From its opening c.1779 it was intended to be a tourist hotel and comprised a dining room, two handsome parlours and seven airy bedchambers and good stabling. Guests were allowed to go from the garden onto a terrace in the old park and might have keys to the gates into the woods and pleasure grounds. By the 19th century guests were permitted to visit the Castle gardens any day except Sundays.

In 1839 the hotel was said to be ‘much extolled by visitors and commercial gentlemen for the excellent accommodation it affords’. It was also a staging post for coaches to Bristol and Taunton. After the railway reached Williton in the 1860s the Withycombes who ran the hotel agreed with Minehead hoteliers and coach proprietors to fix and publish charges for the journey from Williton station and not to persuade passengers to stop at one hotel in preference to others. When the railway was extended with a station near Dunster visitor numbers increased and by 1883 the hotel sent a carriage to meet every train.

[1]     H. Binding, Discovering Dunster, 37; Kelly’s Dir. Som. (1883).