There isn’t a castle, but there is a 15th-century tower house, built for the ‘Prince of the Burren’, the unearthly glaciokarst landscape said to have inspired J R R Tolkien.

A single-track road meanders through woodlands to this Georgian mansion at the foot of lonely Nephin mountain, overlooking Lough Conn, where Susan Kellett and son DJ are 'welcoming hosts'.

George the peacock struts some of the 40-acre grounds of this rural Regency-style country house, run as a hotel for more than four decades by the Bowe family (Relais & Châteaux).

You don’t have to be a fly-fisher to check in at Kieran Thompson’s creeper-swathed, late Georgian mansion with views over the Newport River estuary and Clew Bay, but if you are into the sport, this is indeed the place to stay.

Second-generation owners Mark and Mary Wheeler continue a 60-year tradition of welcoming guests to their Georgian-cum-Victorian house in landscaped grounds and gardens, with a sandy beach on Lough Swilly.

When farmer’s wife Myrtle Allen opened a restaurant in her Georgian farmhouse back in 1964, she did not dream that she was starting a quiet revolution in Irish food, or that her home would become the epitome of country house hotel style.

Amid gardens and parkland, with bluebell woods and trout lakes, this Georgian country house, remodelled in the 19th century, is not a hotel but a family home, say third-generation owners Justin and Jenny Green.

‘This is such a unique and interesting place,’ writes a reader, of the Leslie clan’s 19th-century mansion on a vast estate with gardens, lakes and woodland. ‘I felt like I was in a fairy tale.’

A stay at Lorum is like being invited as a family friend to enjoy the antique-filled country house, candlelit dinners and mountain views.

In shades of heather and bracken, Slieve Foy rises behind the Carroll family’s listed Georgian house.

‘Divine’ views stretch down rolling meadows to a spring-fed lough from this ‘impressive’ Georgian house, which has been home to Verity Butterfield’s family for four generations.

Overlooking Ballinakill Bay, and tucked among private woodland, this fine-looking, family-run hotel offers rooms and service as serene as its surroundings.

Everything is peachy at this apricot-washed Victorian mansion, now a lavishly furnished hotel and fine-dining restaurant, in landscaped grounds with orchard and working kitchen garden.