Best romantic hotels in Dorset

'It's ‘fiercely expensive’, but this Relais & Châteaux hotel in a chocolate-box village doesn’t stint on the traditional country house luxuries, drapes, stripes, sofas and chandeliers, florals, antiques, paintings.

Eclectic menus and stellar cooking are a big attraction at this 14th-century clergy house, now a restaurant-led hotel with recently renovated bedrooms that combine pale paint finishes with designer wallpaper.

There is a hint of Castle Gormenghast about this fairytale 1820s marine villa, with its jumble of roofs, gables, gargoyles, towers and dormers, in gardens running down to a sandy beach.

Dorset House describes itself as a ‘breakfast with rooms’, which is a clue that the morning feast in this eco-friendly, cream-washed Georgian house is a bit out of the ordinary.