Dunster Castle

This morning Ryan and Ilya took advantage of the sunny weather and spend 3 hours at the local playground. Ryan met some local mothers and Ilya attempted to escape into the neighbouring garden with  his new friends.

The weather continued to hold so we decided to visit Dunster Castle after lunch. It is a 10 minute drive down the road (driving is getting much easier, though we saw a huge truck and a bus that could hardly pass each other). The site has been occupied for over 1,000 years and was a private residence until 1970.

The grounds were beautiful- hyathis and tulips were in bloom. In the forest portion of the grounds there was a new kids play area that included a natural wood xylophone. Ilya enjoyed it.

I took a tour of the basement of the castle, including the servants quarters and kitchen. Each room in the castle had a button or wind-up wheel that was used to ring a bell in the servants quarters and request them. This meant there were 30 different bells that rang at different tones to alert the servant's attention.

The kitchen was what you would expect. There was the main kitchen, the scullery, pastry room, and then the meat storing room. The kitchen would have been extremely hot with the stove, open fire and grill, while the other rooms got progressively colder.

The most interesting fact of the tour was that the Victorian kitchen was used until the family moved out in 1970. In the 1960's the lady of the house was give an new, modern kitchen as a surprise. She never liked it and continued to have the cook use the original kitchen, which seems astonishing.

Dunster Castle was very interesting and everyone was satisfied at the end of the visit.

Tomorrow and the rest of the week looks grey and rainy, but this is England in March after all.