The ‘lovely’ walled garden surrounding this small hotel gives it a country house vibe in the middle of this historic market town.

Ethical hospitality is a priority at this hotel in a handsome Victorian villa close to the seafront.

Since Chris Staines and Silvana Bandini bought The Ollerod 18 months ago, its transformation into a ‘restaurant-led’ establishment has continued apace.

‘We will stay there again soon – if I can afford it,’ wrote a reader after a first visit to this country house hotel (Relais & Châteaux) last year. Things must be going well – he’s been back, to find everything ‘pretty faultless’.

There is much to fire the young imagination at this 17th-century manor house above Chesil beach, the setting for John Meade Falkner’s 1898 tale of smuggling, Moonfleet.

‘A great stay, great staff, accommodation, food, and all in a lovely river setting.’ A resounding endorsement from a reader this year for Robert Wilson and Tim Lloyd’s hotel on the banks of the Stour.

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’.

In ‘a wonderful cliff-top location’, this ‘large white edifice above Chesil Beach’ is run as a restaurant-with-rooms by Mary-Lou Sturridge and Tony Mackintosh, late of London’s Groucho Club.

‘Well-regarded’ brewers Hall and Woodhouse have owned this Georgian town-centre inn since 1931. For one reader it is but ‘a useful stopping place’, for another ‘there’s no better place for a choice of Badger Ales’.

With thrilling views over Lyme Bay, the Jurassic Coast and the Cobb, Kathryn Haskins's luxury hotel and restaurant is swaddled by lush cliff-top gardens.