A survivor from a more elegant age, this family-friendly Victorian hotel grandly stands on the seafront.

In ‘well-maintained ornamental gardens’, this ‘handsome hotel’ occupies an ‘extensively enlarged’ old farmhouse on the outskirts of a ‘delightful’ medieval village.

The colonial-style veranda that wraps around this elegant 19th-century restaurant-with-rooms, on the High Street of a pretty village, sets a languid pace for arriving guests.

Connoisseurs and amateurs of every vintage find modern accommodation in Christine and Colin Munday’s impressively reconstructed traditional Sussex barn, part of a complex including a restaurant and a wine shop.

The accolades continue as Clive James and David Stott celebrate their 30th year at their well-liked restaurant-with-rooms – ‘a very special place’ – at the foot of the South Downs national park.