‘The place abounds with creative uses of old, mainly farm, paraphernalia.’ Guide inspectors enjoyed Nick Dent’s diverting Georgian farmhouse turned dog-friendly hotel with most rooms in converted outbuildings.

Bong, bong! It is dinner time at this ancient farmhouse-turned-hotel in grounds bordering Lake Ullswater, where the gong still summons guests to table.

For over 30 years, the Harrison family has greeted visitors to their former 18th-century fishing lodge with ‘genuine warmth and interest’.

‘One of the most unusual hotels we've ever visited.' Guide inspectors were left reeling by art dealer Ivor Braka's pub-with-rooms in the deer park of Gunton Hall.

With rooms in thatched dovecotes, a shepherd’s hut and an 'eccentric’ Victorian villa, Robin Hutson’s ‘whimsical’ seaside hotel is ‘wonderfully located’ and ‘very welcoming’.

Welcome to Wonderland. On the edge of Dartmoor national park, Fran and Pieter Hamman’s Alice-themed hotel has been styled in the manner of a 19th-century collector’s mansion.

In the heart of Wensleydale, Jane and Neil McNair welcome guests to their 18th-century watermill on the River Bain.

The Cotswolds outpost of Justin and Charlotte Salisbury’s small boutique hotel collection, this 16th-century hub-of-the-village pub-with-rooms is now a charming, bohemian bolt-hole.

The Guide's recommendation inspired one gratified reader to book a stay at Eric Culley and Michael Pearson’s characterful B&B in a Yorkshire Dales village: 'I’m pleased to be able to agree with the enthusiastic comments.’

The gallows sign no longer hangs across the road from this historic inn, but the old waiting rooms are still marked ‘London’ and ‘York’, from its days as a stagecoach stop. Look out for the portrait and walking sticks of England’s one-time heaviest man.

More than a thousand weird and wonderful objects are for sale at this Grand-Tour-themed small hotel, eclectically furnished throughout. Sleep in the Raj room; buy a white elephant, enter the Natural History room through a display case door.

A cluster of Soho Georgian houses here combine as a boutique hotel brimming with wit and studied eccentricity – antiques and curios, oil paintings, throne loos, books, busts, vintage beds. Public rooms are patrolled by Sir Godfrey the cat.

Churchill loved his long, hot baths. Book the room he slept in at this former coastal hunting lodge (where he laid plans for D-Day with Eisenhower), and you can wallow in the very same enamelled concrete tub.

There is a piano in room 8 at this estimable restaurant-with-rooms, should you wish to practise the Moonlight Sonata at dead of night. Or pot the black at the snooker table in room 5. Michelin-starred cooking raises more smiles.

At breakfast, raise your eyes from your oak-smoked kipper to admire the pillars and old harmonium in the former sanctuary at this deconsecrated Presbyterian church, now an award-winning B&B and music venue.

Whimsical touches at this neo-Gothic fantasy include wood carvings from a Portuguese palace, a coat of arms prop from Pirates of the Caribbean. Sleep in a shepherd’s hut, a thatched dovecote or a room with a loo with a view.

Many hotels have a ‘library’, sometimes just a token bookshelf, but in the grounds of this Georgian mansion and lovable, idiosyncratic hotel, a galleried library contains a thousand tomes dedicated to the evolution of civilisation.

Just the ticket for train buffs! Guests check in at the former parcels office at this beautiful disused station, sleep in a colonial style bedroom, or a Pullman carriage with Edwardian fittings, take breakfast in the waiting room.