Developments are afoot at this hotel, centred on a Georgian coach house, ‘in a glorious setting on a huge estate with beautiful walled garden’.

‘Just perfect,’ says readers this year of Kathryn and Stuart Dobson’s large Victorian manor house in the heart of Weardale.

Well placed for visits to Durham and its cathedral, Christine Hewitt’s Grade II* listed home is surrounded by extensive gardens among acres of rolling farmland and forest.

Three miles from Hadrian's Wall. among rolling Northumbrian countryside, Catherine Stewart’s ‘just lovely’ B&B is surrounded by a lawned, walled garden.

Overlooked by the ruins of Easby Abbey, Karen and John Clarke provide luxurious B&B accommodation in a rustic country house setting.

At this playful, welcoming B&B in a solidly Victorian former rectory, owners Phil and Sarah Bucknall claim to ‘eschew chintz, embrace eclecticism’.