Qualla: Dunster https://qualla.com/dunster en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Dunster https://qualla.com/dunster Dunster: Introduction https://qualla.com/dunster/ On the first Friday of December every year, the lights go out in Dunster. The shops switch off their bulbs, the streetlamps darken, and a procession of children and stilt-walkers carrying lanterns moves down the Steep, lighting candles in every doorway, windowsill and corner of the village. By the time they reach the bottom of the high street, the eight-hundred-year-old centre of Dunster - the Yarn Market octagon, the Luttrell Arms, the long stone vault of the priory church - is glowing as it would have done in the year 1300. The village turns its back on the present for a weekend. It has had practice. Dunster has been doing the same thing in the same place, with much the same buildings, since soon after the Norman Conquest.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/e/dunster-wp/gcje-dunster-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Dunster: The Castle on the Tor https://qualla.com/dunster/ Dunster Castle sits on a sandstone outcrop two hundred feet above the village - a hill that, in the early medieval period, had the sea lapping at its foot. William de Mohun, a Norman warrior arrived with William the Conqueror, built his timber keep here within twenty years of 106...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/e/dunster-wp/gcje-dunster-the-castle-on-the-tor.mp3 0:06 2 full Dunster: The Yarn Market https://qualla.com/dunster/ Most of medieval Dunster was paid for by wool. By the 13th century the village had a chartered market dating from 1222 and was producing a distinctive kind of broadcloth that traders across England simply called 'Dunsters'. The profits from that trade built the tower on the Prior...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/e/dunster-wp/gcje-dunster-the-yarn-market.mp3 0:06 3 full Dunster: The Quarrel in the Church https://qualla.com/dunster/ The Benedictine priory was founded around 1100 by William de Mohun, who gave the church and its tithes to the great abbey at Bath. The monks built their priory just north of the church and shared the building with the parishioners - one church, two congregations, much friction. T...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/e/dunster-wp/gcje-dunster-the-quarrel-in-the-church.mp3 0:06 4 full Dunster: Hobby Horse and Candlelight https://qualla.com/dunster/ Every May 1st, a strange figure called the Minehead Hobby Horse - a man inside a wooden frame draped in painted ribbons - dances his way from Minehead two and a half miles down the road to Dunster and is received at the castle gate. A 1863 newspaper account thought the custom rem...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/e/dunster-wp/gcje-dunster-hobby-horse-and-candlelight.mp3 0:06 5 full