Tis a very pritty place,’ wrote the diarist and former resident Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. After visiting the National Trust’s red brick mansion, Guide readers happily concur: ‘stunning exterior’, ‘wonderful venue’, ‘an immaculately uniformed staff member waited at the door to uplift luggage to my room’. The twenty-acre grounds ‘have many corners to explore’, albeit with the background hum of passing traffic. ‘Grand’ public rooms, with imposing portraits, are ‘furnished with antiques, old-fashioned drapes and fabrics’; the lounge has ‘intimate groupings of deep sofas and tables, warmed by a roaring fire’. In the wood-panelled, candlelit dining room, chef Ashley Binder’s ‘very good’ seasonal menus exploit produce from the walled kitchen garden, where the 17th-century dovecote is now a wine cellar. A typical dish: skrei cod, broccoli, brown shrimp and preserved lemon. Up the ornate oak staircase, bedrooms in the main house are agreeably traditional to some, ‘dated but well coordinated’ to others (the spa similarly splits opinion). A bathroom was ‘small, but spotless’. Breakfast brings ‘excellent molten scrambled egg, freshly squeezed juice, high-quality leaf tea’. (Robert Gower, Paul Abrahams, and others)