Log fires, character defined over the centuries, warm and friendly service and excellent food, country house hotels have a particular charm all of their own. Expect homemade, food, local produce, antiques and four poster beds, not to mention some of the most glorious country views around. Here are our top 10 country house hotels.
Editor’s Choice 2017 Country House Hotels
Hambleton Hall - Summer Breaks in Rutland
Hambleton
Arrive, as did Guide readers this year, ‘in perfect time for sitting on the terrace and being wonderfully spoilt’.
From £270.00 per night
Lewtrenchard Manor - September Treat
Lewdown
Admirers of Sue and James Murray’s ‘characterful’, ‘beautiful old manor’ continue to sing its praises. ‘It is uniformly excellent, with high standards of hotel-keeping, comfort and service,’ says a guest this year.
From £155 per night
The Lake - Champagne escape offer
Llangammarch Wells
‘It’s like going home,’ writes a regular Guide reader this year, who considers Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s country house hotel ‘a regular haunt’.
Ardanaiseig - Hogmanay Special Offer
Kilchrenan
The scene is pure theatre: the Scottish baronial mansion, built in 1834, with turrets, chimneys and crow-stepped gables, stands against a backdrop of Loch Awe. Inside, owner Bennie Gray, an antiques dealer, has filled the place with ‘eccentricity’ and ‘a pleasingly old-fashioned air of country house grandeur’.
From £217 per night
Marlfield House - Two Night Break Special Offer
Gorey
‘Ambitious’ and ‘very stylish’, the Bowe family’s Regency-style mansion (Relais & Châteaux) stands in extensive, ‘well-kept’ gardens'.
From £230 per night
Gilpin Hotel - Indulgence Afternoon Offer
Windermere
‘Our favourite small hotel – simply the best run we’ve ever stayed at.’ The Cunliffe family’s ‘great’ country house hotel continues to please Guide readers.
From £255 per night
Judges - Bubbly Spring and Summer Rates: £125
Yarm
Guests roundly praise the ‘professionalism and charm’ of the Downs family’s ‘brilliant’ country house hotel. The Victorian pile stands in ‘lovely manicured parkland’ on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors; within, the ‘dedicated’ staff are ‘unstarchy’, ‘friendly’, ‘extremely attentive’.
From £145 per night
Askham Hall - Midweek Special Offer
Penrith
Homey and faintly bohemian, the Lowther family’s Grade I listed Elizabethan mansion is surrounded by terraces, topiary and lawns.
From £125 per night
Hilton Park
Clones
‘Grand and glorious’ Hilton Park is less a hotel than a stately ancestral home where one stays as a cherished guest.
From £90 per night
Lords of the Manor
Upper Slaughter
In ‘attractive’ gardens, ‘just as fetching in winter frost as in the spring’, this honey-stoned former rectory welcomes guests into plush luxury (with, some visitors point out, a price tag to match).
From £195 per night