‘We have become addicted to this place,’ write trusted readers, following a return visit to this beautiful Elizabethan manor house (Relais & Châteaux).

Perennial visitors reported ‘a warm welcome’ from Clive James and David Stott at their restaurant-with-rooms – ‘a cherished institution to many Glyndebourne regulars’ – at the foot of the South Downs.

‘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’.

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.

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