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

‘We stumbled across the hotel quite by accident – oh, serendipity! We plan to return.’ Newcomers this year to the Hine family’s ‘gracious’ pink brick Queen Anne coaching inn join a loyal following,

Readers ‘had a really lovely, relaxing stay’ at Lila Arora’s apricot-washed Georgian mansion, approached by an avenue of lime trees amid sheep-grazed pastures.

Surrounded by manicured lawns, wild meadow flowers and woodland, this Cotswold-stone manor house, a few miles outside Tetbury, has ‘exceptional staff, excellent service, delightful furnishings’.

‘We were welcomed with a complimentary Pimm’s,’ write Guide insiders, who dined at James Moffett’s historic stone manor house in the Peak District national park.

‘The hotel, its staff and food were exquisite,’ a reader writes of an anniversary visit to Max and Susan Fischer’s stone manor house, in a village on the fringe of Chatsworth Park.

‘An impressive building’, this Georgian manor house ‘stands at the top of a valley, overlooking fields, rivers and bucolic bliss’. Bedrooms, some with a four-poster, have designer wallpaper, a bath and power shower. A more rustic, dog-friendly courtyard room was ‘almost a small apartment’, with every canine comfort.

Hereford Castle is long gone, but ducks bob happily on the old moat beside the terraced garden of the Watkins family’s hotel.

Returning guests in 2018 ‘enjoyed a relaxing time in warmth and comfort’ at Tim Hart’s purpose-built hotel, on the former ramparts of Nottingham’s medieval castle.

From the moment of arrival at this Tudor manor house on the banks of the River Wye, say readers, ‘we knew this was the place where we wanted to spend time.’

For ‘a quiet weekend in a friendly, characterful hotel among bucolic surroundings’, John and Sue Cushing’s red brick Georgian manor ‘fits the bill perfectly’.

A drive through woodland brings visitors to ‘a romantic lake, a spectacular dovecote, a splendid fountain’, and what looks, for all the world, like a Loire château.

‘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’.

A hotel of character in a Peak District village, The George is hundreds of years old. Owner Eric Marsh likes to say 500 – but the deeds prove only 300.

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.

With its own farm, orchard, vegetable and herb gardens, food is at the heart of everything at Judy Gardner’s restored restaurant-with-rooms, occupying a half-timbered farmhouse and rustic outbuildings.

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.

A classic English country escape is offered at this ‘beautifully situated’ Lutyens-style house with a long-standing reputation for ‘magnificent hospitality’ and ‘pleasingly professional staff’.

Hosting travellers since 1564, this famous black-and-white-timbered Tudor pile is now a spa hotel.

Easy-going cool seeps through this rustically chic Georgian town house B&B (owned by Sam and Georgie Pearman, see previous entry), overlooking elegant Pittville Park.

Traces of a past life as a 12th-century Cistercian abbey filter through this atmospheric, historic hotel, which combines ‘character, eccentricity and individuality at its best’.

‘Such excellent attention to detail.’ Approached through ‘well-maintained grounds’, entered under a balustraded minstrel’s gallery, the Wiser family’s ‘superb’ Georgian manor is a ‘very grand’ affair.

Zesty by design, laid-back by nature, this family-welcoming country house hotel and spa sprawls across a fine Italianate building.