There is star quality indeed at Olga and Alex Polizzi's updated version of a historic Tudor inn, in a charming medieval South Downs village.

At the heart of the South Downs National Park, this village pub with rooms is the rural sister of the seaside Crab & Lobster, Sidlesham (see entry). It is country but no bumpkin.

With the Goodwood Estate down the road and the South Downs on the doorstep, this rural, dog-friendly former coaching inn is popular with Barbour-wearing country-sports enthusiasts and hikers.

History meets the modern world at this Elizabethan manor house, a luxury e hotel in eight acre-grounds, with gracious drawing room, state-of-the-art spa and fine-dining restaurant.

Like all Butcombe gastropubs with rooms, this whitewashed Georgian village local retains its personality while offering smart bedrooms and creative cooking along with pub classics.

Just a couple of minutes' drive from Petworth, with views over farmland to the South Downs, this gastropub has smart contemporary bedrooms and some exciting menu choices.

Across the road from Hove's shingle beach, Ben and Pamela McKellar's Edwardian mock-timbered gastropub is 'loved by locals for its foodie reputation'.

'It felt like we were in France, looking out from the restaurant balcony at rows of vines.' Our inspectors were transported by their stay on this estate, now a family-run concern with a vineyard planted in 2017

In gardens bordered by a stream, the Wild family's hotel, converted from three 17th-century cottages, a stroll from its own quayside, has well-equipped, country-classic bedrooms, formal and informal dining in restaurant and brasserie.

'It would be beautiful in summer,' said our inspectors, whose tour of this vineyard, on the slopes of the South Downs, was marred by rain.

You half expect to find a chamber pot under the bed, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti taking tea by the drawing-room fire at this 19th-century villa, a homage to the Victorian Aesthetic movement, perfect in every detail.