Swinton Park

Elegant bedrooms are equipped with modem points, CD players and satellite television, and there is wi-fi access throughout the hotel. The gracious reception rooms are lavishly furnished with open fires, antiques and ancestral portraits. The hotel also has a spa, a wide choice of massage and beauty treatments, private cinema, boot room and snooker room. The superb three-rosette Samuels Restaurant, under the direction of new head chef Andy Burton, enjoys sweeping views over the surrounding parkland, and serves a contemporary menu with an emphasis on game, venison and fresh produce from the surrounding family estate and walled garden.

Celebrity chef Simon Crannage runs a cookery school in the converted Georgian stables, with a wide choice of hands-on day and residential courses to choose from throughout the year.