Countryside chic fills this 17th-century farmhouse on a ridge above vast fields beyond the Cotswold village.

Behind a facade of half-timbering and honeyed stone, this ‘friendly, professionally run’ hotel by the village green ‘successfully combines an imaginative, glossy-magazine look with olde-worlde Cotswold charm’.

Julia and Nick Davies are bringing a breath of fresh air – and a few ‘tastefully flamboyant touches’ – to their 18th-century dower house high on the east side of the Malvern hills.

In the Teme valley, an area abundant with hops and mistletoe, this refurbished red-brick Victorian coaching inn has ‘plenty of character’.

Views of parkland and surrounding countryside stretch out from this Victorian manor, where ‘the ambience exudes comfort and encourages total relaxation’.

In a village known as the ‘jewel of the Cotswolds’, Andrew and Gaynor Riley’s restaurant-with-rooms occupies Sir Gordon Russell’s former furniture showroom facing the grass-fringed, chestnut-shaded ‘broad way’.

Judy Gardner runs her rural restaurant-with-rooms and cookery school in an ‘attractive conversion’ of farm buildings, in a ‘charming, peaceful' village on the edge of the Cotswolds.

A garden path from this Edwardian country house leads to the Malvern hills – and the ‘friendly, helpful, efficient staff’ are happy to send you off with a packed lunch and a walking map.

‘I cannot think how this beautifully appointed and run B&B could be bettered,’ says a Guide reader in 2017.