A coat of arms and portraits of past owners set the tone at this honey-hued former rectory, recommended by Guide readers for a ‘welcoming, comfortable, relaxing’ country house experience. The 17th-century building is a ‘lovely’ rambling hotel with a family crest above the porch, mullion windows, antiques, cosy fireplaces and ‘lots of nice touches – board games to play, wellies to borrow’. It is surrounded by several ‘beautiful’ gardens including a lawn, apparently custom-built for Pimm’s and croquet, a walled garden, a wild flower meadow. In The Dining Room restaurant, with its beams and original art, chef Charles Smith’s ‘excellent’ seasonal menus might include olive oil poached Loch Duart salmon, courgette, ras el hanout spice couscous, coriander and lemon dressing. The ‘well-appointed’ bedrooms have ‘lots of drawers and hangers’; the largest have archetypal Cotswold views, bay windows, colonial four-poster. Management has recently been taken back in-house, although as a reader says: ‘Had we not asked, we’d not have known: service was confident and assured. We had a very good time, and hope to return.’ (Rosemary Melling, and others)