‘Perfection to the very last detail,’ writes a reader this year, of Tim and Stefa Hart’s hotel (Relais & Château) with landscaped gardens stretching down to Rutland Water. ‘Welcoming staff and outstanding food and service.’ ‘A lovely, civilised place,’ adds a Guide regular in 2018. ‘Faultless,’ another endorses. The house was built as a hunting lodge in 1881 for a wealthy brewer, whose society-hostess sister Eva Astley Cooper entertained the likes of Noël Coward and Malcolm Sargent in the drawing room. The bedrooms, individually designed by Stefa Hart, have fresh flowers, stamped postcards, biscuits from the hotel’s celebrated bakery. The restaurant has held its Michelin star since 1982, with Aaron Patterson running the kitchen since 1992. His modern European cooking uses locally produced and foraged ingredients, including fruit and vegetables from the kitchen garden. For example, breast of Merrifield Farm duck, mandarin, black beans. The grounds are a colourful patchwork of topiary, ornamental ponds, statuary and a parterre. A sister hotel is Hart’s, Nottingham (see entry). (Lee Menzies, Sara HollowellRG, AB, RS)