Best country house hotels in Somerset

The setting is pure hog heaven at Robin Hutson’s third Pig hotel, surrounded by a deer park in a fold in the Mendips. The part-Georgian building comes in the group’s signature shabby-chic style.

In a medieval village overlooked by a red sandstone castle, the old guest house for Cleeve Abbey is now a friendly, unstuffy hotel, with a mix of bedroom styles, eclectically furnished public rooms, gorgeous bar, and menus catering to all tastes.

The yellow submarine in the 'beautiful grounds' and the hedge sculpture of a giraffe set the scene at this ‘playful, quirky hotel’, in a traditional honey-stone building.

Koos Bekker and Karen Roos have brought to Somerset the vision behind their hotel on a Dutch Cape wine estate, creating an idyll around Palladian Hadspen manor house, with farm-to-fork dining, dreamy spa, unique rooms in converted outbuildings, beautiful gardens – and a Roman villa as well as two interactive museums.

The old Ring o’ Bells village pub is now a restaurant-with-rooms, transformed by new owners and trained chefs Caroline Gardiner and Alan Lucas in a 2020 lockdown makeover.

There are ‘sweeping vistas’ from this Lutyens-style country house in ‘stunning grounds’, now a luxury B&B praised for the warmth of the welcome and the ‘friendly, attentive’ owners and staff.