The Great House’s enjoyable, enormously comfortable’ restaurant-with-rooms adds a dash of French flavour in a medieval wool village as English as they come. ‘The atmosphere is excellent – formal yet friendly’; ‘the dining experience is top-notch’. On the heated patio and in the handsome dining rooms (dark wood floors, tables laid with white linens and a posy), modern plates use fine ingredients in season. Characteristic dishes: deep-fried Colchester rock oysters, pickled carrot and cucumber, chilli lemon mayonnaise; saddle of local venison, parsnip and parsley root mash, juniper berries. Upstairs, bedrooms retain character with their Tudor beams and sloping ceilings, half-timbered walls or a Jacobean four-poster bed. Most are spacious, with a separate seating area, though one guest deemed an attic room under the eaves too snug. ‘Our ample Grand Room had a good-sized bathroom with robes and slippers. A nice touch: complimentary sherry.’ Wander round the town after breakfast: you’re on the historic market square; shops, art galleries and charming crooked cottages are in every direction. (Patricia Jay, DG, and others)