Heythrop Park

In every room, big comfy beds, good lighting and sleek bathrooms offer supreme comfort with botanical prints and soft colours reflecting the natural setting. There’s a pleasing duality. Superior rooms have contemporary touches, while modern accommodation is layered with nostalgia.

Two unique venues within the hotel host big nights out without going out. Both large enough for musicals and bands but never impersonal, they offer a choice of authentic theatre-going experiences and lively evenings of pop, rock and soul.

Seasonal flavours and brave modern dishes headline in the hotel’s three restaurants, plus a helping (or two) of quintessential British classics and time-honoured recipes. Menus feature a generous choice of all things sliced, peeled, baked and slow roasted.

The Spa & Wellness Club offers exceptional wellbeing and fitness experiences with a pool, sauna, scented relaxation room, thermal suite and gym. Luxe spa treatments and massages focus on beauty from the inside out. And the al fresco hot tubs? Essential!

The 18-hole Bainbridge Course is championship standard. Redesigned by world-renowned architect Tom MacKenzie, it’s par 72 with generous fairways. Exciting, and sometimes exacting, tees thread imaginatively around ancient woodland, lakes and streams.

Fantastically peaceful, there are 440 acres of tamed wilderness to wander within the estate alone. But it’s by no means isolated. This is gateway to the butter-coloured Cotswolds and the poetry of Oxfordshire’s university city and characterful towns. Blenheim Palace is next-door neighbour and breweries, distilleries and wildlife parks are close by.

The manor dates from the early 1700s with Charles Talbot, the only Duke of Shrewsbury, returning from a European sojourn with the determination to recreate a Baroque-style palazzo in England. Inspired by Italian artist Bernini, this was design rarely before seen.