‘A nice welcome’ and ‘an excellent dinner’ await at this ‘very pleasant place’, a stone-built former priests’ house by the River Brit, deep in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.

An ancestral home today under the care of three members of the Prideaux-Brune family, this Dorset-stone 17th-century country house has been a hotel since 1972.

‘Delightful’ riverside gardens, ‘stunning’ views, ‘excellent’ meals and an ‘exceptionally friendly’ atmosphere keep guests returning to this well-loved country hotel in a former 16th-century priory.

‘Comfortable’ cottage-style bedrooms, ‘first-class’ food, ‘friendly, efficient, helpful’ staff and a ‘cosy’ atmosphere combine to form one ‘lovely little hotel’, say ‘delighted’ guests, many of whom become regulars.

With pools, family films, play facilities, a crèche and an early-morning breakfast club, the kids are all right at this Georgian manor house in ‘beautiful’ countryside.

On the edge of the River Stour, the smooth metal-and-glass lines of this ‘stylish’, ‘welcoming’ bankside hotel call to mind a docked ocean liner.

Schoolgirls are a rarer sight today at this former girls’ boarding school, now restaurant-with-rooms, in historic Shaftesbury, but education is still important: tutored wine-tasting weekends can be arranged.

The fourth addition to Robin Hutson’s drove, this little Pig, in a ‘rambling’, turreted Gothic manor house, is ‘a relaxed version of a country hotel, noticeably enjoyed by guests of all ages’.

For those who like to be beside the seaside, this style-conscious hotel ‘has much to recommend it’.

Off the main street, Paul and Nicky King’s ‘very pleasant’ hotel hides behind a ‘lovely’ large walled garden filled with little pathways, nooks and crannies to become lost, and then found, in.

It’s easy being green at this handsomely restored Grade II listed Victorian villa close to the seafront.

A laid-back vibe characterises Mark Cribb’s friendly small hotel near Boscombe beach.

Thomas Hardy’s Tupcombe eavesdrops in the inglenooks of this 16th-century inn, renamed the Sow and Acorn in The First Countess of Wessex. Under the real-life management of Jack and Alex MacKenzie, the refurbished inn (Red Carnation Hotels) retains the ‘good atmosphere’, beams, stone floors and log fires that the writer captures.

Chef/patron Sarah Lethbridge and her husband, Anthony, run their much-refurbished country pub and hotel in a pretty village close to the Somerset-Dorset border.

A burbling stream separates smart dining rooms from the chattering buzz in the popular bar at this quirkily renovated roadside inn.

A short walk from the historic Cobb, Lyn and Jason Martin’s B&B welcomes guests with stylish calm.