‘A superb hotel,’ reports a trusted reader in 2019, of Robin Hutson’s Elizabethan manor at the end of a mile-long drive.

Behind its Georgian front, the timber-framed Great House is as old as its neighbours in this medieval former wool town. It has been run as a restaurant-with-rooms since 2018 by Dominique Tropeano, owner of Colchester Zoo.

‘They make you feel welcome and at home’ at Sally and David Ruthven-Fox’s dog-friendly hotel ‘by the shores of Loch Sunart and surrounded by hills’.

Flower decked without, welcoming within, this ‘excellent’ village pub, contrived from three former miners’ cottages, is liked by readers flying out of nearby Bristol Airport.

‘It is impossible to criticise this hotel,’ wrote a reader, praising everything from the service to the ‘delicious food’ at this mellow stone hotel.

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.

A ‘cosy, friendly restaurant-with-rooms’, this timber-frame, former 15th-century merchant’s house has been an inn for some 400 years.

Brothers Charles and Edmund Inkin invite you to eat, drink, sleep. Pray and love, too, by all means: there is a free-and-easy vibe at this dining pub, ‘a truly wonderful place’.

After a day spent exploring the shops and galleries of St Ives, guests at Malcolm Herring’s hilltop private hotel can relax on the seaward terrace with a Blue Hayes Colada and feel serenely above it all.

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

In ‘one of the prettiest villages in south Lakeland’, Richard Rose’s former 18th-century coaching inn is firmly on Cumbria’s culinary map.

We hear glowing accounts of this Georgian bank-turned-boutique hotel.

‘An example of what a British seaside hotel can do.’ Trusted readers were impressed by Lindsey and Andrew Evans’s coastal property, created with an ‘ambition, vision and style one might associate with California or Australia’.

‘You are essentially staying in someone’s beautiful farmhouse, with an exquisite garden and delicious breakfast.’ A reader reaffirms her support this year for Sarah Burgoyne’s ‘wonderful’ B&B.

In landscaped gardens that gently melt into Constable country, with tables for alfresco drinking and dining, 'one of Suffolk’s oldest pubs has been renovated very smartly’.

‘Very much the country pub, with a warm buzz to it’, this old coaching inn, built around a cobbled courtyard, stands at the heart of a historic stone village.

‘This is indeed a lively community pub,’ write trusted readers, urging a promotion from the Shortlist for Kate Lewis and Chris York’s popular pub-with-rooms.

An Edwardian hunting lodge, rumoured to have served in the 1960s as an MI6 training centre, is today a welcoming country house hotel where sleepers wake to glorious views over Exmoor.

On the banks of the River Avon, in a ‘charming’ village, stands ‘a pub-with-rooms that has real character and is clearly popular with the locals’.

Rachel Heath’s ‘idyllic’ Victorian fishermen’s inn has a wonderful position overlooking Start Bay.

‘An ideal place to relax,’ writes a reader after a 2019 visit to Alice and Jade Calliva’s 18th-century coaching inn turned rustic-chic hotel with a ‘wonderful lochside setting.’

‘In the heart of West Cowes, five minutes from the ferry’, up ‘a very steep side road’, this Grade II listed town house has been given a stylish make-over.

There is a ‘physical warmth immediately discernible’ upon entering this 1850s village pub close to the Peak District national park.

At the entrance to Glen Lyon and close to Loch Tay, this small country hotel in an old coaching inn is at the centre of an Arts and Crafts conservation village. The Fortingall Yew, believed to be over 3,000 years’ old (the United Kingdom’s most ancient tree), stands in the churchyard.