Hotel wedding venues in Dorset

In Hardy’s ‘Emminster’, ten minutes from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, a historic priest’s house is now a restaurant-led hotel.

When the Earl of Ilchester hired a certain Thomas Hardy to extend his Georgian dower house, he could not have foreseen the praise it would receive as an 'extremely well-run, very comfortable, welcoming hotel with first-class food' (Relais & Châteaux) and spa.

In the same family since it was built in the early 17th century, this manor house in Thomas Hardy's 'vale of little dairies' has a timeless appeal – but change has been afoot.

In Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge, this bow-windowed Georgian coaching inn enters the Guide after a £5 million make-over for the Stay Original group.

Short of piping you aboard, they could scarcely be more welcoming at this luxurious, fun, dog-friendly hotel, with the sleek lines of a cruise ship, on the banks of the Stour.

Robin Hutson put the Pig in higgledy-piggledy with the most fanciful of his litter of porcine hotels (see index), set in a yellow seaside villa built in 1820 in romantic picturesque style, with gabled dormers, a turret and random roof line.

There's more than an air of Cape Cod about this white clapboard hotel above Chesil Beach, which could have come straight out of an Edward Hopper painting.

Close to Sherborne Abbey, this handsome Georgian town house in ‘lovely’ walled gardens makes a ‘pleasant retreat’ in the heart of the historic market town.

A green ethos prevails at this ‘friendly’ hotel, in a handsome Victorian villa within strolling distance of the beach.

‘A lovely, intimate hotel in a beautiful town’, this former coaching inn with ‘friendly, helpful’ staff has been updated with a pared-back, modern rustic feel.