Longueville Manor

‘Unbelievably perfect in every way’, Malcolm and Patricia Lewis’s manor-house hotel (Relais & Châteaux) sits in landscaped gardens with a lake and specimen trees. A forecourt fountain sets the scene as you enter through a grand stone archway. Interiors blend contemporary style with history, with beams thought to have come from the Spanish Armada in one bedroom, an 18th-century French four-poster in another. A reader had a ‘well-lit, spacious room’, with REN toiletries and scented candles in the bathroom. A suite at the foot of the tower has a separate lounge, a stone bath and oversized walk-in shower as well as direct access to the gardens with outdoor pool. Dine in the Oak Room, its original panels augmented by broken-up carved oak chests, or in the airier Garden Room, choosing wines from an exceptional cellar. Andrew Baird uses produce from the Victorian kitchen garden in dishes such as wild halibut with wakame seaweed, pickled Jersey shiitake, miso – and Jersey Royals, of course. Staff are ‘charming and attentive but not OTT’. At breakfast there is freshly squeezed orange juice, apple juice, organic free-range eggs.