Spa Hotels

In the grounds of an Arts and Crafts country house, the Elan Spa has a fitness room with static bikes, treadmills and exercise pool – or facials and massage for those who simply want to unwind. Perhaps a hot stone massage, or a chakra well-being ritual.

This sprawling honey-stone building with its tall chimneys and leaded windows offers history, grand rooms and antiques, along with a thoroughly modern spa and 21st-century luxuries.

Fragrant herbs and flowers from the renowned herb garden infuse signature treatments in the Secret Garden Spa at this Georgian mansion. There’s a pool with floor-to-ceiling windows, a thermal suite, an outdoor hot tub.

While some of us bring home a fridge magnet or a Cornishware mug, businessman Andrew Long has gone one better and bought a hotel.

From the ozone-treated pool and outdoor hot tubs, to crystal steam rooms and aromatherapy saunas, this spa sets the standard. There are top-to-toe beauty treatments, yoga and Tai Chi, all in a lovely New Forest setting.

A single-storey hotel enfolded in a gorse-clad valley, a stroll through National Trust land to the eponymous cove, has been in the Makepeace family for three generations.

First-time visitors can’t help but stand and stare at this exquisite country house, with its William and Mary symmetry and 20 acres of gardens and parkland.

This Tudor Gothic-style Elizabethan mansion, extended over centuries, overlooks parkland with a rare 17th-century parterre, walled rose garden, cascade, lily pond and follies.

Within a walled Victorian kitchen garden, the new Cottage Garden spa offers therapies based on fruit and herbs, massage with natural oils from Jersey brand Manomara, facials and more. The focus is on beauty and rejuvenation.

‘A year spent without a visit to The Nare is a year wasted,’ writes a returning guest of this perennially popular country house hotel overlooking the sands of Carne Bay.

Seen through walls of windows, the sea is a huge presence at this family-run hotel ‘in a fabulous location’ on the cliffs above a surfers’ beach.

Surely one of Britain’s most beautiful spas lies within old brick walls in the gardens of this Italianate mansion. Facilities include an indoor and (notorious) outdoor pool, a gym, hot tubs – an easy drive from London.

This handsome wisteria-covered Victorian building, in a picturesque village by the Beaulieu river on the edge of the New Forest, is a pleasing prospect.

The real charm of this grand country house, with sweeping gardens, terraces, oak panelling and swish spa, lies in its warm and informal atmosphere.

This former 17th-century inn, which is part of the Duke of Devonshire's 30,000-acre estate at Bolton Abbey, is today an impressive country house hotel, with fine dining and a spa.

Ocean views are on show through the floor-to-ceiling windows from some of the rooms at this hotel, on a headland above St Ouen's Bay.

‘The location is stunning, with views of the Devon coast with its sandy beaches and tumbled rocks,’ writes a reader delighted by this family-friendly hotel, promoted from the Shortlist this year.

The Cave-Browne-Cave family have kept a welcome in the hillside at their big, white hotel above Cardigan Bay since the days of silent film, when men wore bowler hats to the beach.

A hotel in an Italianate mansion in landscaped gardens and pleasure grounds, Cowley Manor will re-open in June after major refurbishment.

A tunnel leads from the hotel to the Serenity Spa, creating a heightened sense of escape. Extensive facilities include a hammam, an Indian steam room, outdoor hot tubs, an ice fountain and a Zen garden with infinity hydrotherapy pool.

A contemplative, adults-only space, this Ayurvedic-inspired spa has an inside- outside feel, with cliff-top hot tubs, an indoor pool with sea views, a reed-filtered outdoor pool. Herbs and heat, salt and seaweed are all deployed for your well- being.

On a cliff-side above a secluded south Devon cove, this stylish hotel is just the place for seaside de-stressing. A sun terrace at the spa looks over Babbacombe Bay; inside, there’s an aromatherapy shower, a hydrotherapy pool, a sauna and steam rooms. Algae-based beauty and well-being treatments are available for face and body – and a duo massage room means double the repose.

Once a youth hostel, this hotel at the corner of a late Georgian terrace has definitely waved away any thoughts of backpackers' basics, swapping them for boutique chic.

The luxury spa and salon at The Beaumont in Mayfair is a calm white-marble Art Deco space including a range of massage, facial and hammam treatments as well as a salon for hairdressing and grooming.

Close to Sherborne Abbey, this handsome Georgian town house in ‘lovely’ walled gardens makes a ‘pleasant retreat’ in the heart of the historic market town.

Approached down a mile-long avenue of lime and beech trees, this ‘very grand and lovely’ Palladian mansion exults in 500 acres of parkland and gardens.

In a ‘beautiful’ setting, Jan and Adam Moore’s dog-friendly country hotel in an 18th Century sporting lodge looks out over the hills and is surrounded by trees.

Guests don robes and flip-flops to relax and sip champagne with lunch at this luxury hotel’s spa garden. The bath house has a relaxation pool, vitality pool, salt- infused sauna and a blossom steam room.

Sitting above a secluded cove on Bryher’s rugged west-facing coast, with 'nothing in between to Canada', this pretty blue-and-white weatherboarded farmhouse-turned-hotel is a '10/10 experience’, say smitten guests.

The Milsom family’s Victorian country house hotel in Dedham Vale, in the heart of Constable country, has been subtly rebranded with the addition of a spa by the pool house.

Staying in this Georgian mansion in ‘flower-filled and perfectly tended gardens’ is 'a pretty faultless experience', with 'every detail properly attended to but the atmosphere still friendly and relaxed', say readers.

The Gloriana of Robin Hutson’s Pig hotel collection (see index), this Grade I listed Elizabethan beauty stands in ‘wonderful grounds in a special location’ in the peaceful Otter valley.

A ‘playful, quirky hotel’, in a traditional honey-stone building, Homewood is ‘full of eclectic eccentricity’.

Overlooking the River Hodder in the Forest of Bowland, this sprawling 18th-century manor house is joyously traditional, with stone-flagged floors, open fires and bags of atmosphere.

At the entrance of this village in the beautiful Val d’Annivers, Anne-Françoise and Claude Buchs-Favre’s large white, blue-shuttered hotel dates from 1859.

The ‘superb’ Aquarius Spa at this luxury hotel is housed in a mellow Cotswold stone building, with underwater recliners in the indoor/outdoor pool. It is strong on facials and massage – Thai, Swedish, hot stone, ‘Melting Away’. . . A place to be pampered.

Pack your Schiaparelli gowns, beach pants and playsuits, and board the 'sea tractor' for a trip back to the 1930s at this Art Deco hotel on a tidal island where the beau monde came to play.

Perched in the tree canopy, the Swedish- style Jetty Spa offers treatments for Lake House guests. Or stay in a Spa Lodge with steam room, outdoor sauna and hydrotherapy tub, and book in-room treatments. Gilpin guests have use of nearby Choices Health Club.

Pigs have foraged in the New Forest since the Norman Conquest, but a different breed arrived in 2011, when Robin Hutson took on a Georgian hunting lodge and reinvented the English country house hotel.