An Arts and Crafts house in ‘beautiful’ landscaped gardens, run as a country house hotel, is promoted from the Shortlist this year at the urging of a trusted reader. Recent extensions, housing a gym, spa and guest accommodation, are ‘designed to resonate sympathetically with the older building’. A ‘smallish’ annexe room had ‘a comfortable bed, a coffee pod machine, a bath with overhead shower’. Some rooms have a more contemporary edge, others open on to the herb garden; all have bathrobes, slippers, ESPA toiletries. In the original house’s ‘most attractive wood-panelled dining room, with mullioned windows and thick glazing bars’, Paul Evans’s ambitious dishes use seasonal and home-grown produce, perhaps South Coast hogget loin and belly, salt-baked kohlrabi, fermented black garlic, ewe’s curd, lamb jus. In the ‘light, stylish’ annexe brasserie, ‘twice-baked cheese soufflé and a duck confit with plenty of meat (slightly salty jus)’ were enjoyed. A ‘first-rate breakfast’ (rather wasted on laptop-browsing conference delegates) included ‘delicious scrambled egg, tender, thick bacon, tasty black pudding. Service was very courteous, supervised by an alert manager.’ (Robert Gower)