Behind the golden-stone facade of two mansions, at the centre of Bath’s magnificent Georgian crescent, lies a luxurious hotel with an oasis garden, spa and 12-metre pool.

A Georgian dower house extended to designs by Thomas Hardy, this luxury hotel and spa (Relais & Châteaux) stands in landscaped grounds adjoining a deer park.

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.

Fiona and Paul Robinson’s New England-inspired hotel, with ‘magnificent views over Gerrans Bay’, ticked all the boxes for a reader this year, from the ‘wonderful people’ to ‘food that is too good to be true’.

This decadent Art Deco grande dame, set on its own tidal island, ‘harks back to a more glamorous age’, and a recent refurbishment has been given the thumbs up by faithful regulars.

This peaceful small hotel and popular restaurant in a romantic Jacobean former dower house, surrounded by country gardens, continues to delight readers.

Tumbling down cliffs overlooking Falmouth Bay, Olga Polizzi’s glowing white Tresanton shows how to put style into a family-friendly seaside hotel – at a price.

The old rector was none other than the great-grandfather of Sally Searle, who, with husband Chris, welcomes guests to their loved and lived-in Victorian home.

What could be lovelier than to take breakfast on the terrace of Malcolm Herring’s small hotel, gazing over the harbour, or to sip a Blue Hayes Colada at sunset? This is an exclusive place (no dogs, no tiny tots, no walk-ins), done out in seaside blues and creams, with the garden gate leading to the Coast Path and Porthminster Beach.

‘It’s hard to fathom just how many things the Endsleigh does right,’ says one reader, of this Grade I listed hotel set in 200 acres of fairy-tale gardens in the Tamar valley.

‘Perfection – time seems to slow down the moment you enter,’ says one trusted reviewer of this contemporary take on a traditional coastal inn, which exudes a wonderfully relaxed and cheerful atmosphere.

While children let rip at sister hotel Bedruthan (previous entry), all is serene at the adults-only Scarlet, ‘perfectly located overlooking the beach and ocean’, with Ayurvedic-inspired spa and outdoor hot tubs.

Fallow deer roam parkland around a part-Georgian house that has been converted into one of the Pig hotels in Robin Hutson’s Home Grown collection (see index).

A higgledy-piggledy 19th-century marine villa with a jumble of towers and gables gazes across Studland Bay to the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks.

Callooh! Callay! On the fringe of Dartmoor national park, this Alice-themed hotel is a veritable cabinet of curiosities, a treasure trove of wit and invention.

A Guide regular gives ‘five stars’ this year to this B&B in a serene Georgian town house overlooking Penzance harbour.

‘The perfect pit stop’ on the Coast Path between Salcombe and Dartmouth, Gara Rock stands ‘high on the cliff above a beautiful beach’.

Approach this 18th-century mansion, exulting in 500 acres of parkland and gardens, down a mile-long avenue of lime and beech trees: what awaits is ‘very grand and lovely’.

‘Top class in all respects’, Lyn and Jason Martin’s Grade II listed Regency B&B overlooking the Jurassic coast is pleasing inside and out.

High above the 14th-century fishing village, Andrea and Simon Copper’s sleekly designed, child-free retreat offers a stunning seascape, which stretches across Mevagissey Bay to historic Chapel Point and beyond.

Birdsong fills the morning at this sophisticated B&B, in the sprawling grounds of the National Trust’s Buckland Abbey.

Dinghies skim beneath the 150-foot terrace of Karen and David Richards’s hotel, in an enviable position overlooking the Fal estuary in a fishing village on the Roseland peninsula.

You can almost hear the clatter of hoofs and the trundling of wheels at Nigel and Anne Way’s Tudor coaching inn in a medieval village on the Dartmoor borders, dominated by its hilltop castle.

This striking cliff-top hotel on the Cornish Coast Path is on ‘excellent form’ and as ‘welcoming, friendly and helpful as ever’, says a fan.