‘One of the nicest locations we’ve stayed at.’ Trusted readers enjoyed a night's stay at Andy and Gayle Shearer’s boutique hotel on the seafront.

Built by ironmaster for his bride, this Elizabethan manor house in lovely gardens laid out by William Robinson is as romantic a venue as you could wish. Exclusive use is available for parties of up to 60, with the wedding breakfast in the glass-walled dining room.

We have readers who have been returning for more than 20 years to the Wild family’s traditional hotel ‘in a picturesque village’ once known for oyster fishing.

‘Great to cross over the road to an incredible beach where you can stroll for miles,’ writes a reader who spent ‘a great weekend’ at Harry Cragoe’s restaurant-with-rooms.

Trusted friends of the Guide rated this boutique B&B, on the fringe of the Old Town, ‘the nicest’ they had stayed in.

‘A hidden treasure.’ On the banks of the Cuckmere river, this handsome, extensively enlarged old farmhouse is run ‘with the highest standards of hospitality'.

Between cathedral city and marina, set a little back from the main road, Lloyd van Rooyen and Gavin Wilson's smart, contemporary hotel centres on a farmhouse in a pastoral setting.

‘This is a chain hotel, but so kind and beautifully situated.’ A great, white Victorian edifice, the Grand is part of the small Elite Hotels group, but there is nothing elitist here.

In a ‘little, old, cobble-stoned, grass-grown, red-roofed town, on the summit of its mildly pyramidal hill’ (as described by former Rye resident Henry James), the George presents the street front of a Georgian coaching inn.

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

Priory Park, where W G Grace once wore whites, is a cricket ball throw from this Georgian hotel inside the city’s Roman walls.