‘It’s up there with the top hotels we’ve stayed at,’ writes a reader this year of Sue and James Murray’s romantic rebuild of a Jacobean manor house, surrounded by parkland.

From dolphin-spotting to table tennis, there is plenty to enjoy at Keith Makepeace’s family-friendly hotel, which stands in expansive countryside, with views towards the sea.

Above Woolacombe Bay, this former Edwardian gentleman’s retreat is today a ‘comfortable, relaxed’ hotel owned by Amanda James.

‘There is much to like and laugh about’ at this utterly transformed Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house, in a ‘glorious setting’ in the Otter valley.

‘A place to dress up, to dream, to luxuriate’, this ‘one-of-a-kind hotel’ on a tidal island charms Guide readers with its ‘magical setting’ off the south Devon coast.

Old-school service and attention to detail come to the fore at this ‘splendid place’ overlooking Lyme Bay.

In springtime, wisteria festoons Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s 18th-century manor house, an ‘oasis of tranquillity’ set amid orchards and woodlands in the Taw valley.

Olga Polizzi’s countryside retreat, at its origin a Regency fishing lodge created for the Duchess of Bedford, is today an ‘unpretentious, wholly enjoyable’ hotel ‘decorated with charm and taste’.

‘It’s a pleasure to stay here.’ In a ‘beautiful location with stunning views of Hay Tor and Dartmoor’, the Hassell family’s ‘delightful’ hotel has ‘a lot going for it’: ‘friendly, helpful and efficient staff’; ‘good-quality food’; the ‘quiet surroundings’.

Step out of your yacht, if you have it, and on to the private jetty at Lana de Savary’s cliff-face hotel, on a ‘fabulously secluded’ cove; the rest of us will descend the winding road and admire the wide vista over the Teign estuary.

‘The Grose family maintains its excellent tradition’ of providing first-class hospitality near the rugged Devon coastline, where consecutive generations have run the family-friendly hotel for more than 120 years.

‘All rather fun’, Fran and Pieter Hamman’s 19th-century manor house on the edge of Dartmoor national park teems with curiosities and vintage pieces.

‘As delightful as ever’, reports a trusted Guide correspondent in 2017, of Adam Fox-Edwards’s former coaching inn–turned–sporting hotel near Dartmoor.

Wake to birdsong at this mellow stone building in secluded gardens – Bertie and Bryony Hancock’s sophisticated B&B is surrounded by the National Trust’s Buckland Abbey estate, and the 700 acres of grounds that come with it.

‘Warm and familiar’, this country hotel, in ‘a chocolate-box-perfect part of Exmoor’, has been refurbished in a ‘luxurious, contemporary’ style by its owner, Claire Carter.

At high tide, the waves come up to the wraparound terrace of this ‘beautifully designed’ beachside hotel, sheltered in a pretty cove.

Rinus and Aniet van de Sande have created a much-praised meeting point for art, culture and hospitality at their ‘mildly eccentric’ late-Victorian hotel in a quiet Devon valley.

On the Salcombe estuary, this Victorian hotel makes the most of the panoramic vista across the water, with wide terraces, huge windows and binoculars in the bedrooms to take in the views.

An inn since the 1720s, this characterful place rich in maritime history continues to welcome weary travellers to the old port and ship-building town.