‘An amazingly gorgeous hotel,’ writes a reader this year, of Tracy and Galton Blackiston’s restaurant-with-rooms, ‘ideally located’ for a seal trip to Blakeney Point.

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

‘In a peaceful village near Lavenham’, this 15th-century former coaching inn is ‘full of character warm, casual, intimate, relaxed’.

‘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.

Near the RSPB Titchwell Marsh nature reserve, this dog- and family-friendly hotel is sandwiched between fields and ochre-hued marshland, leading down to the North Sea.

Standing in well-maintained gardens, an 19th-century water mill is now a modern spa hotel.

With views across gently undulating Hertfordshire countryside, this sprawling old building, with its outlying stables and barns, dates back to the 15th century.

Anyone braving the climb to the top of Julian and Carolyn Godlee’s characterful B&B and restaurant is well rewarded.

In a ‘quaint village’ just off the Great North Road, Anne and Richard Furbank’s 19th-century coaching inn is done up with a dash of good-humour.

Dripping with chandeliers, replete with plaster mouldings, this glorious Regency confection may have served as a camouflage factory in the Second World War, but these days it positively flaunts its opulence.

Amid acres of ‘lovely’ rose gardens and landscaped lawns, this family-run hotel combines old-fashioned comfort and modern flourishes with ‘superb service’.

‘Helpful staff’ and a ‘very convenient location’ on the River Cam win top marks for this modern hotel.