Grantley Hall

Grantley Hall spent most of its life as a private Yorkshire estate before an extraordinarily thorough restoration reopened it as a hotel. The seventeenth-century house sits in gardens on the edge of the Dales, minutes from Fountains Abbey and Ripon, with rooms and suites that mix the original panelling and plasterwork with a very contemporary standard of finish.

The wellness offer is the reason most people come. Three Graces Spa runs across multiple floors with pools, thermal rooms and treatment suites, and alongside it sits ELITE — a performance and recovery facility with cryotherapy, altitude training and sports science support that has no real equivalent in a British country house hotel.

Dining is unusually deep for a property this size: six restaurants and four bars, headed by Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall, which holds a Michelin star for a menu built explicitly around Yorkshire produce, much of it from the estate's own kitchen garden. Elsewhere there is a Japanese-inspired room, a valley-view brasserie and a late-night bar that keeps the house from ever feeling stuffy.