Chewton Glen

Chewton Glen has been setting the standard for English country-house hotels for decades, and it wears its seniority lightly. The house sits on the southern edge of the New Forest with 130 acres around it and a footpath that leads down through the fields to the cliffs above Christchurch Bay — roughly a twenty-minute walk to the sea.

The spa is one of the largest attached to a British country house, with a long indoor pool, hydrotherapy pool, outdoor pool and a full treatment floor. Elsewhere on the estate there is a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, a cookery school in a purpose-built kitchen, and a restaurant that has kept its reputation intact through several changes of chef.

The treehouses are the modern signature: a scatter of timber suites raised on stilts in the woodland below the main house, each with a wood-burner, a hot tub on the deck and a breakfast hamper winched up in the morning. They cost considerably more than a main-house room and book out months ahead in summer.