‘The enthusiastic welcome immediately made us feel at home again.’

Behind a ‘gorgeous, checkerboard red-brick-and-stone facade’, in a hamlet a mile from Goodwood and ‘an easy, breezy drive from Chichester’, the former village grocer’s shop is run as a friendly B&B.

‘A comfortable, cosy place with nice rooms to curl up in’, Sam and Janet Bakose’s 250-year-old inn stands on the A272 between Midhurst and Petworth, in the South Downs national park.

‘Opposite the walls of the castle in this ancient market town’, Lee and Katie Williams run their Grade II listed Regency town house as ‘a top-notch, great-value’ restaurant-with-rooms.

Facing the ‘wide sweep of tidal mudflats’ surrounding Pagham Harbour, this whitewashed restaurant-with-rooms stands as a ‘tucked-away’ beacon of ‘delicious food’ and ‘exceptional hospitality’.

‘As wonderful as ever,’ writes a regular visitor to Sarah Burgoyne’s ‘charmingly run’ Grade II listed, red brick Georgian manor house adjoining a private estate, close to Lewes.

A ‘stunningly restored’ 17th-century threshing barn in the South Downs national park is the heart of Moya and Richard Connell’s rural B&B/restaurant and working organic farm.

On the outskirts of a picturesque Sussex village stands this ‘handsome, extensively enlarged’ old farmhouse, run by ‘friendly, attentive staff’.

A colonial-style veranda wraps around this refined 19th-century restaurant-with-rooms in a picturesque village.

With Chichester in one direction, the pristine sands of West Wittering in the other, guests at Lloyd van Rooyen and Gavin Wilson’s smart, contemporary hotel have the best of both worlds.

Once a month a string quartet serenades afternoon tea at this Victorian seafront hotel nicknamed ‘The White Palace’.

Outwardly a Georgian coaching inn on the cobbled main street of the medieval town, Alex Clarke’s ‘absolutely lovely’ hotel is 16th-century in its bones – the timbers from an Elizabethan galley.

Modern flourishes blend with history and tradition at this 'wonderfully atmospheric' old builfing.

The ‘beautiful gardens’, ‘wonderful atmosphere’ and ‘pleasant rooms’ were highlighted by guests this year, who praised this ‘delightful’ B&B.

Ahead of the curve, Susan and Roger Marlowe’s characterful B&B within the East Cliff conservation area has long been a bastion of sustainable practices and high-quality, locally sourced organic food.

The shipbuilders, boozy sailors and notorious Tenterden smuggling gang that once formed the clientele of this 18th-century watering hole, have been replaced by peace-seeking travellers bent on finding a decent meal.

Walk across Petworth Park to this 350-year-old, quintessentially English village inn, once a regular stopover for the Household Cavalry, who would rest their horses en route to Portsmouth. .

Chic and rustic, this ‘simply lovely’ spot, in the foothills of the South Downs, is a countryside inn through and through.

Steeped with Scandinavian cool, Mariella and William Fleming’s renovated village pub-with-rooms is a stylishly relaxed spot near the Chichester canal towpath.

Priory Park, where WG Grace once wore whites, is a cricket ball throw away from this Georgian hotel inside the city’s Roman walls.