The Empress of Blandings among Robin Hutson’s Pig hotels (see index), this honey-stone Elizabethan manor house in the Otter valley is reached by a mile-long carriage drive.

In its own secluded wooded valley, this B&B is ideal for guests who want to come and go as they please.

‘The views are stunning’ from Martyn Scarterfield and Petra Lampe’s Edwardian holiday cottage-turned-B&B, which gazes over the Avon estuary to Burgh Island.

Built as a fishing lodge for Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford, and formerly home to the local fishing club, Olga Polizzi’s Regency cottage orné is surrounded by parkland landscaped by Humphry Repton, with the Tamar running through. Guests can fly fish for salmon and sea trout on eight miles of riverbank – tackle and ghillie provided.

Between Dartmoor and the sea, in a village remarkable for its crooked church spire, Richard Hendey’s former Georgian rectory is today ‘a really good hotel’.

Deep in the Taw valley, Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s wisteria-hung 18th-century manor house is a characterful, ‘very comfortable’ hideaway surrounded by orchards and woodlands.

Dramatic moorland views are part of the allure at this isolated Georgian mansion, where former guests are said to have included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.