Standing right on the quay overlooking estuary and salt marshes, in a coastal village of flint cottages, gift shops and galleries, Emma Stannard’s hotel is ideal for outdoorsy family holidays.

‘As soon as we arrived the kids got started on the Woolley Grange Sheep Challenge treasure hunt,’ writes a Guide insider after a stay at this ‘beautiful Jacobean manor house in lovely grounds’.

In ‘lovely Cotswold stone buildings around a pretty courtyard’, this mostly 16th-century former coaching inn has had a stylish make-over.

‘The surrounds are dramatic, the interiors pretty spectacular too.’ Readers report much to enjoy at Robert Dorrien-Smith’s gloriously isolated island hotel.

It had ‘that “special” feel of a very good and well-run hotel’, found a visitor to this country house hotel and spa (Relais & Châteaux) in deepest Thomas Hardy country.

‘A lovely, family-friendly hotel,’ was Guide inspectors' verdict on this 16th-century stone manor house with spa in beautiful grounds, ‘looking out over rolling hills’.

Cocooned in ‘lovely, peaceful grounds in glorious countryside’, Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s ‘welcoming’ Victorian country house hotel continues to offer an enjoyable bucolic break.

In a hillside location with ‘stunning sea views’, this supremely family-friendly hotel has something for everyone – indeed, everything for everyone.

‘Very enjoyable; a place for relaxing weekends and special occasions,’ say Guide inspectors of the ‘beautifully proportioned Queen Anne mansion in spacious grounds’.

A country retreat just outside St Albans occupies an extended 300-year-old manor house, once the home of Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Scottish Baronial meets Italian Renaissance in Samantha Leslie’s Victorian pile on one of the last great Irish castle estates still owned by the founding family.

‘We much enjoyed our stay,’ writes a reader this year, of this Edwardian country house hotel in ‘grounds of a sporty nature’.

Once used to billet D-Day troops, this revamped early 17th-century mansion now hosts ‘young children, exhausted parents’ and grandparents.

A Victorian baroque showstopper, this manor house stands on a steep hill in gardens above the Fowey estuary. It is part of the Luxury Family Hotels group.

Built in 1832, as Ventnor burgeoned from fishing hamlet to resort for health tourists, the Fisher Hotel became ‘royal’ thanks to the patronage of Queen Victoria.

A shooting lodge in the New Forest is home to the mother Pig, the first of Robin Hutson’s small but growing chain of family-friendly Pig hotels (see index).

Once a month a string quartet serenades afternoon tea at this Victorian seafront hotel nicknamed ‘The White Palace’.

‘We were looking forward to our stay,’ write Guide insiders, on returning to this classical Georgian mansion in ‘wonderful grounds’, rescued from ruin in the 1990s by Don and Wendy Matheson.

Henry VIII gave the manor of Barnsley to each wife in turn – the old romantic! – before it passed to the Bourchier family, who built this Cotswold stone house in the 1690s.

‘Completely wonderful in every way.’ ‘One of our absolute favourites.’ Readers give the thumbs-up to Richard Seton’s spa hotel overlooking the River Dart.

‘So cosy and welcoming’, a swish hotel (TA Hotel Collection, see also The Crown, Woodbridge, Shortlist) formed from three timber-framed 15th-century buildings in a medieval village.

It is as if a cruise liner had docked on the banks of Dorset’s Stour several years ago, to the sound of popping corks, and everyone liked it so much that they’d stayed.

Blond sofas, fluted pillars, chandeliers, paintings, oriental rugs, gilded mirrors… Opulence abounds in this bay-fronted Victorian former gentleman’s residence on the prom.

High on a clifftop, overlooking Penarth Pier and the Bristol Channel, a nursing home in a Victorian suburb has been converted into a pleasant hotel with spa facilities.