With Thameside gardens and free mooring, this 18th-century inn has six courtyard bedrooms with vintage and contemporary furniture, a cosy beamed bar, a menu of pub favourites and creative dishes.

In gardens bordered by a stream, the Wild family's hotel, converted from three 17th-century cottages, a stroll from its own quayside, has well-equipped, country-classic bedrooms, formal and informal dining in restaurant and brasserie.

A Regency mansion in parkland, once home to Percy Shelley's mother, has been reimagined as a contemporary country house hotel infused with a blithe spirit.

Pigs have foraged in the New Forest since the Norman Conquest, but a different breed arrived in 2011, when Robin Hutson took on a Georgian hunting lodge and reinvented the English country house hotel.

Once a retreat for Lord Beaverbrook, this Victorian mansion, filled with fascinating memorabilia, is home to chic contemporary bedrooms, a fine-dining restaurant, Japanese grill, library, cinema and spa.

In a small town in the Test valley, a Georgian coaching inn, home to the little-known Houghton fishing club, has received an exciting makeover.

Close to Canterbury, this village gastropub has four stylish bedrooms, informal dining inside and out, and imaginative menus of locally sourced produce.

You half expect to find a chamber pot under the bed, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti taking tea by the drawing-room fire at this 19th-century villa, a homage to the Victorian Aesthetic movement, perfect in every detail.