The Pig at Combe

‘Down country lanes and a mile-long private drive’, this Elizabethan manor house is the Miss Piggy among Robin Hutson’s quirky country house hotels (see index). Like that porcine diva, it embodies fabulosity with a dash of irresistibility and a great big dollop of attitude. Choose a room to suit you, from a main-house double with a monsoon shower, to a rustic family suite in the stable yard, with king-size four-poster, freestanding bath and monsoon shower, bunks for the kids. Artfully scruffy interiors by Judy Hutson mix Zoffany fabrics with brocante finds from Paris, antiques and oil paintings. ‘Our comfy luxe room was one of the few twins with a bath not in the bedroom.’ There is a panelled bar with roaring fire, a ‘lovely dining room’ with a rococo plasterwork ceiling and mullioned windows. The menus of home-grown and local produce (from within a 25-mile radius) might feature Lyme Bay hake or 28-day-aged Dartmoor rump steak, or flatbreads alfresco in the ‘stunning and vast grounds’. One reader felt the food was ‘good but not special’ but noted that breakfast was ‘all home made with no prepacked items’. (MG, DB, and others)