Editing Castle Drogo (section)

===Later use===
After Julius's death, his wife Frances and her son Basil continued to live at the castle. During 1939–45, Frances and her daughter Mary ran the house as a home for babies made homeless during the [[The Blitz|bombings]] of London. Frances Drewe died in 1954 and Basil was then joined at Drogo by his son Anthony and his wife. In 1974, Anthony and his son, Dr Christopher Drewe, gave Castle Drogo, Whiddon Farm, several cottages in Drewsteignton, a financial dowry and {{convert|600|acre|km2}} of the surrounding land to the [[National Trust]]. It was the first 20th-century property the charity acquired.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southwest/series6/castle_drogo.shtml|title=BBC Inside Out – Castle Drogo|publisher=BBC}}</ref> The writer and National Trust administrator [[James Lees-Milne]] recorded his impressions of the house and its owners in a diary entry dated 9 September 1976; "Reached Castle Drogo ... at eleven. Very satisfactory house of clean-cut granite. A new family aspiring to, rather arriving at, landed gentry-hood and now the representative living upstairs in a tiny flat, all within my lifetime".{{sfn|Lees-Milne|1998|p=120}}

The castle has been{{when|date=February 2025}} undergoing an extensive, five-year restoration.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/castle-drogo/features/saving-castle-drogo|title=Saving Castle Drogo|website=National Trust}}</ref> A new visitor centre with shop and café opened in the summer of 2009, after [[English Heritage]] required that industrial kitchen equipment such as that used by the previous café within the house, be removed from Grade I listed buildings. In February 2011, the National Trust launched a public appeal for money to fund necessary restoration work.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8316296/Campaign-to-save-the-last-castle-built-in-England.html |title=Campaign to save the last castle built in England |work=The Telegraph |date=10 February 2011 |accessdate=10 February 2011}}</ref>