In one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, this Palladian house overlooking the Slad valley in Laurie Lee country is a soothing escape for rattled city-dwellers.

‘We had a wonderful family holiday here.

The very model of an olde worlde inn, with its flagstones, beams, blazing fires and jumbled interiors, The Lamb sits on the edge of a picture-perfect Cotswolds wool town, in the aptly named Sheep Street.

The late Rosemary Verey, doyenne of the 20th-century English country garden, created the flourishing grounds at this 17th-century Cotswold stone mansion, her home from the late 1950s.

A ‘beautifully manicured estate which fits its billing as a village within a village’, Thyme is a collection of Cotswold stone buildings with a cookery school, pub and spa interspersed with ‘perfect English country gardens’.

A wisteria-festooned arch frames the entry to this prettily refurbished hotel, forged from a row of 17th-century honey-hued houses.

Across from Imperial Gardens, this trio of well-restored Georgian town houses forms an alluring whole: one modish, metropolitan hotel with a smart restaurant, two lively bars and a collection of very-voguish bedrooms.