‘An amazingly gorgeous hotel,’ writes a reader this year, of Tracy and Galston 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.

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.