An 18th-century town house combines with its 17th-century neighbour as an atmospheric small hotel, a stroll from a charming survivor of this market town’s Georgian heyday, the Theatre Royal.

You can drink champagne in the vaulted bar, as W H Auden did, dine among the ancient stone walls like Philip Larkin, or sleep in a tranquil room once used by Benjamin Britten, at this hotel in the monastic buildings of a dissolved abbey.

‘An oasis of calm in the northern suburbs of Newcastle’, Peter Candler’s mansion is named after the wooded valley in which it stands.

More tasteful developments this year among the potpourri of Georgian estate buildings that create James Allison’s hotel 'in beautiful countryside a few miles from Scotch Corner’.

‘A beacon of how to do things properly: metropolitan style with Yorkshire substance.’ Generous praise from a regular reader this year for this ‘smart, sophisticated' hotel on the edge of Sheffield’s student quarter.

No cause for truancy at this revamped former Victorian school and headmaster’s house, in a pretty Dales village on the River Ure.

Travellers heading between London and Sunderland have long stopped at this Georgian inn which skirts the North York moors.

Across from The Stray’s 200 acres of open parkland, this alluring town-centre hotel is in a seamlessly converted Victorian coach house.

Head straight out on to beautiful moorland from the doorstep of Peter and Sarah Garnett’s ‘very comfortable’ Edwardian guest house in a scenic village within the North York Moors national park.

Occupying a prime spot in a moors-edge market town, this ‘excellent hotel’ has been a local hostelry for 450 years, though the Buchanan family has been at the helm for just 37 of those.

‘High on the hills’ near Huddersfield, this ‘friendly’ roadside drovers’ inn has ‘detour-worthy food’; ‘tremendous views to all sides’ are nearly as impressive.