Sustainability is the new black at this handsome Victorian villa with pristine green credentials.

In March 2018, the then owners sold what was then Bridge House to Silvana Bandini and Chris Staines, she a former general manager at The Pig near Bath, he one-time executive chef at the Abbey Hotel, Bath.

Once used to billet D-Day troops, this revamped early 17th-century mansion now hosts ‘young children, exhausted parents’ and grandparents.

White walls, pleasant staff, bright sunshine, blue, blue sky, sparkling sea just over the road…’ For one reader this year, everything hit the spot at this cool small hotel overlooking Lyme Bay.

It had ‘that “special” feel of a very good and well-run hotel’, found a visitor to this country house hotel and spa (Relais & Châteaux) in deepest Thomas Hardy country.

It is as if a cruise liner had docked on the banks of Dorset’s Stour several years ago, to the sound of popping corks, and everyone liked it so much that they’d stayed.

‘A handsome Georgian house’ and former coaching inn, overlooking the River Stour meadows in a market town, is today ‘a very pleasant hotel’ with ‘lovely staff'.

With thrilling views over Lyme Bay, the Jurassic Coast and the Cobb, Kathryn Haskins luxury hotel and restaurant is swaddled by lush clifftop gardens.