Ten of the UK and Ireland’s best historic hotels
Gravetye Manor - Classic British Escape
East Grinstead
‘Every comfort is anticipated’ at this ‘classy, tasteful’ Elizabethan manor house, from the garden flowers in the public rooms to ‘the most extensive cheese trolley we’d ever seen’.
Hartwell House & Spa - £89.50 Per Person Special Offer
Aylesbury
Swish up the drive through an Arcadian 18th-century landscape to reach this Jacobean mansion.
From £200 per night
Lewtrenchard Manor
Lewdown
‘It’s up there with the top hotels we’ve stayed at,’ writes a reader this year of Sue and James Murray’s romantic rebuild of a Jacobean manor house, surrounded by parkland.
Star Castle - 10% discount all year
St Mary’s
‘Everything you’d expect from a really good hotel is here,’ writes a trusted Guide correspondent in 2017, fresh from celebrating the holidays at the Francis family’s characterful hotel above Hugh Town.
Plumber Manor
Sturminster Newton
Richard and Brian Prideaux-Brune, with Richard’s wife, Alison, run their Jacobean ancestral home as a characterful – some say eccentric – hotel where guests are ‘cosseted and cared for’ by ‘charming staff’.
Bodysgallen Hall & Spa
Llandudno
‘A lovely old house’, this historic mansion on the slopes of Pydew mountain has glorious views of Snowdonia.
Hilton Park
Clones
At the end of a mile-long drive through ‘an estate of great tranquillity and beauty’ stands Fred and Joanna Madden’s Italianate mansion.
Llangoed Hall
Llyswen
Deep in the Wye valley, this privately owned 17th-century manor house stands in ‘a great atmosphere of peace’, overlooking green meadows leading to the river.
Coul House
Contin
Steeped in stories of baronets and scandalous affairs, Susannah and Stuart Macpherson’s ‘beautiful Georgian house’ is today a ‘simply lovely hotel’ standing in extensive gardens ‘magnificent with mature trees’.