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

‘There is a timeless feel and magic about the setting’ of this Jacobean manor house. It stands in 'immaculate gardens in Thomas Hardy’s ‘vale of little dairies’.

‘This hotel is amazingly charming.’ A reader was delighted this year by a stay at this 16th-century priory-turned-hotel, ‘in a beautiful location’ beside the church and the River Frome.

‘An example of how really good management can make a stay memorable,’ writes a Guide regular this year, after visiting Ariane and Jamie Jones’s small thatched hotel in the heart of Thomas Hardy country.

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.

Personal attention from the owners won high praise from readers this year, after a stay at this restaurant-with-rooms overlooking Blackmore Vale.

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.

The eye-catching interior of Lyn and Jason Martin’s Grade II listed Regency B&B is bested only by the coastal views from its lofty sash windows.

‘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’.

‘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.

Guide regulars were drawn to this former 16th-century coaching inn ‘partly for its excellent location; partly because of the Thomas Hardy connection’.

‘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.

Carefully restored, with an abundance of quirky details – a stream separates the dining room from bar – this well-designed roadside inn is a social media hit.

A stone’s throw from Shaftesbury’s famous Gold Hill (of Hovis ad fame), there has been an inn on this spot since the 1500s. This may well be its most successful incarnation, with ‘top-notch’ staff, ‘stunning’ rooms and a ‘first-class‘ restaurant.