‘We only called in for coffee, but were shown around by enthusiastic staff… and came away thinking what a wonderful place.’ A reader was impressed by this Georgian country house hotel, set back from the road, in lovely gardens.

Far-reaching views across sheep-spotted countryside spool away from this ‘splendid’ 300-year-old malthouse-turned-restaurant-with-rooms above the Evenlode valley.

A wisteria-festooned arch frames the entry to this prettily refurbished hotel, in a hilly Cotswold town.

‘Little has changed over the centuries’ at this Tudor coaching inn in a National Trust village. Familiar to Harry Potter fans as the Babberton Arms, it was once home to Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

‘In a pretty south Cotswolds village’, this is a ‘fun, relaxing place’. A Palladian mansion with Arts and Crafts refinements and an Italianate logia, it was recently made over for the Calcot Collection.

‘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’.

‘We visit Oxford every year and the Old Parsonage never disappoints.’

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.

In its deepest fabric 14th-century, this former coaching inn could, by the 1860s, boast of its hot and cold baths; a more recent revamp has gone much further.

‘The best of old-world charm and modern facilities’, this child-friendly hotel in a Cotswolds market town near Blenheim Palace has bags of personality.

Owner George Dailey revitalised this honey-stone roadside pub from a tired pub into a popular village hub.