‘Well placed for visiting the historic market towns' of Midhurst and Petworth, Sam and Janet Bakose’s 18th-century inn proved more than halfway decent on a Guide inspection.

‘We enjoyed the waterside location,’ write trusted readers this year, drawn back for a third stay at Sam and Janet Bakose’s 350-year-old inn overlooking Pagham Harbour with its reserve of mudflats and salt marsh.

Walk across Petworth Park to this 350-year-old, quintessentially English village inn, once a regular stop-over for the Household Cavalry, who would rest their horses en route to Portsmouth. .

Chic and rustic, this ‘simply lovely’ spot, in the foothills of the South Downs, is a countryside inn through and through.

Steeped with Scandinavian cool, Mariella and William Fleming’s renovated village pub-with-rooms is a stylishly relaxed spot near the Chichester canal towpath.

In a village on the edge of the South Downs national park, the Newbon family has given a new lease of life to a run-down West Sussex pub.