George the peacock struts some of the 40-acre grounds of this rural Regency-style country house, run as a hotel for more than four decades by the Bowe family (Relais & Châteaux).

When farmer’s wife Myrtle Allen opened a restaurant in her Georgian farmhouse back in 1964, she did not dream that she was starting a quiet revolution in Irish food, or that her home would become the epitome of country house hotel style.

Amid gardens and parkland, with bluebell woods and trout lakes, this Georgian country house, remodelled in the 19th century, is not a hotel but a family home, say third-generation owners Justin and Jenny Green.

‘This is such a unique and interesting place,’ writes a reader, of the Leslie clan’s 19th-century mansion on a vast estate with gardens, lakes and woodland. ‘I felt like I was in a fairy tale.’