Approached via quiet lanes bordered by hedgerows and dark-limbed trees, Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s Victorian hunting lodge-turned-country house hotel stands in extensive grounds stretching to a lake on the River Irfon.

In beautiful grounds near the Dyfi estuary, this chic restaurant-with-rooms occupies a 16th-century manor house once owned by Queen Victoria.

Built over 50 years, from 1925, by Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion, the Italianate village, grew up behind this Victorian mansion, now a hotel that ‘combines old-world touches with stylish modernity’.