It may have a medieval pele tower, a 17th-century topiary garden, and now a Michelin-starred restaurant, but Charles Lowther’s ancestral pile also has an unpretentious, relaxed atmosphere. Stuffed full of antiques and family heirlooms, its ‘shabby-chic’ public rooms, where both children and dogs can roam, are comfortably cluttered with piles of books, modern art and old photographs. Expect, too, the odd frayed carpet. Large (sometimes vast) bedrooms with leaded windows and fireplace are ‘decorated with flair’; the best overlook the quintessential English gardens. Some bathrooms have a marble washbasin and a roll-top bath. Richard Swale uses produce from the kitchen garden and the estate to conjure ‘delightfully balanced and creative dishes’ such as hand-dived scallop tartare with elderflower and rosehip, or dry-aged shorthorn beef with smoked shallot and beetroot. Meanwhile, Nico Chieze is ‘an affable and attentive host’ and the library’s honesty bar ‘made us feel we were staying at a grand house rather than a hotel’. (Robert Cooper, and others)