The Talbot Inn

This 15th-century coaching inn with its old arched carriageway has been beautifully made over in casual-chic style as a pub-with-rooms. It was a second venture for Dan Brod and Charlie Luxton, with Matt Greenlees (see also The Lord Poulett Arms, Hinton St George, and The Bath Arms, Horningsham). There is nothing pretentious here. Drop in for a pint and you find flagstones and bare floorboards, scuffed leather-upholstered chairs, rough plasterwork, blazing log fires, vintage maps and clocks, a record player to spin the vinyl … In the various dining spaces, and on the cobbled courtyard, locally sourced menus major on pub classics done well – perhaps a ploughman’s with home-baked bread or cider-battered fish and chips. More inventive dishes might include pan-roasted halibut with pea and broad-bean risotto. A beamed coach house serves as a grill room. Bedrooms have Bramley bath products, Egyptian cotton sheets, seagrass flooring, but nothing so brown as a wardrobe. One has a modern emperor-size four-poster, a sitting room, an in-room roll-top bath and shower room. Breakfast brings thyme-roasted mushrooms on toast, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, the full Monty.