Just above the beach, Lana de Savary’s hotel was newly built when Edward VII came by rowing boat for a Devonshire cream tea.

‘The drama of dinner is played out in fine style’ at Tracy and Galton Blackiston’s ‘gorgeous’ restaurant-with-rooms in a coastal village.

There is much to fire the young imagination at this 17th-century manor house above Chesil beach, the setting for John Meade Falkner’s 1898 tale of smuggling, Moonfleet.

‘An eligible, self-contained gentleman’s residence, very unique. . . with every modern convenience. . .’ So Kenneth Graham describes Toad Hall, which he modelled on this Victorian mansion, a baroque extravaganza with sumptuous interiors, overlooking the Fowey estuary.

At the end of a long drive past rustic cabins, a helipad and a forest-fringed meadow, this 21st-century rebuild of a Georgian lodge is a ‘highly professional, near faultless’ modern country house hotel.

Families have ‘a grand time’ at this 16th-century manor house with spa, in ‘lovely manicured grounds’.