Best hotels in The Cotswolds

Out past Oxford, just on the edge of the Cotswolds, Estelle Manor presides over 85 acres of its own and some 3,000 more of rolling Oxfordshire parkland, gardens and ancient woodland. It's both a country house and a private members' club, all done up in a maximalist swirl of vintage finds and beautiful 20th-century pieces, atmospheric lighting and soothing tones. Days here are busy in the best way: a Roman-style bathhouse, four restaurants, a long outdoor pool, a kids' club for the little ones, and a paddock kitted out for archery and axe-throwing. It's part grand country mansion, part grown-up playground – and absolutely fantastic.

Mere minutes from the centre of Cheltenham, Cowley Manor is a magnificent Italianate house, recently given a sharp and slightly mischievous new life by the crowd behind some of Europe's best cocktail bars. The result? A country-house hotel that is definitely one-of-a-kind, and rooms that take you down a designer rabbit-hole of bold colours and very funky details. Inside, log fires and deep sofas keep it cosy; outside, acres of parkland roll away into lakes where swans drift among the lily pads and giant rabbits (sculptures!) hide in the grass. Spend your days swimming, wandering, or settling in at the bar, the Cotswolds outpost of the cool-as-a-cucumber Experimental Cocktail Club.

Broadway is the kind of place that you might describe should someone ask you to picture a quintessential English village: honey-coloured stone, immaculate gardens, and a quaint High Street that is said to be one of the prettiest in the UK. At the heart of it all is The Lygon Arms, a coaching inn that King Charles I sheltered in during the English Civil War. In fact, his former sitting room is now the hotel reception, complete with the secret spiral staircase! Today, a seasonal restaurant occupies the vaulted dining room, there's a spectacular spa behind the historic facade, and the surrounding Cotswolds countryside does the rest.

The Pig hotel group – a collection of country houses across England, each built around a kitchen garden and a their famous 25-mile menu – found its natural home when it took over this 17th-century manor in the Cotswolds village of Barnsley. The house was formerly owned by Rosemary Verey, one of Britain's most celebrated garden designers, and her legacy is still very much in residence: a laburnum walk, a beautiful knot garden, a Tuscan temple and a kitchen garden that supplies the restaurant year-round. Four miles from the market town of Cirencester, with a village pub directly across the road and a spa tucked among the orchards, it's a very easy place to while away a few days in the quintessential English countryside.

Plonked in the middle of 400 acres of private Hampshire countryside, Heckfield Place is handsome, historic and really very cool. Less than an hour from Heathrow, it's close enough to London for a long weekend, but far enough away to feel like you're properly "in the countryside." And in fact, Heckfield really is its own world, dictated less by check-in times and more by the seasons and the biodynamic farm at its heart that supplies most of the (extraordinary) food in the two restaurants. Choose Marle with its Michelin Green Star, or the old-stable block, Hearth and prepare to be blown away. You won't have any problem decompressing here, but you just might struggle to leave.