Best hotels in The Lake District

On the eastern side of Lake Windermere, up the winding Crook Road and past the broody, rolling fells, you'll find the Gilpin Hotel & Lake House. The Cunliffe family have spent six generations turning this Lakeland bolthole into one of England's most coveted retreats and there are actually two abodes set a mile apart: the 21-acre Gilpin Hotel, with its Michelin-starred restaurant, pan-Asian Spice and a meadow of llamas and micro pigs, and the six-bedroom Lake House, hidden in 100 private acres on the bank of Knipe Tarn. Both run on the same motto, "love and laughter," and both deliver it with aplomb (with plenty of G&Ts to go around).

The Lake District has been turning writers soppy since Wordsworth, and the eastern shore of Windermere is where the drama is really laid on. Handily, this is exactly where you'll find Langdale Chase, a manor house that's all gables and turrets and pure Victorian fantasy. The hotel reopened in late 2023 after the most thorough restoration in its history and was promptly named the best hotel in the north, with two AA Rosettes for the food following a little later. And it's not just inside that will make you swoon... Outside, 4.5 acres of beautiful, sculpted gardens lead down to the shimmering water of the lake, a private pier and the hotel's very own boat. This is the lakes done properly.

Above the village of Grasmere, in a serene fold of the Lake District that William Wordsworth spent his life eulogising, is Forest Side Hotel, a Victorian Gothic mansion that was left for decades before reopening in 2016. It's the work of Cumbrian hotelier Andrew Wildsmith, and it makes no secret of the fact that it's really a restaurant with rooms. In fact, Paul Leonard's kitchen has held a Michelin star since day one and picked up a green star for sustainability 10 years later. Around it lie 43 acres of woodland and walled garden, roamed by roe deer and the odd Herdwick sheep. Come hungry.

An old Edwardian summer house from 1901 and now the Lake District outpost of South Africa's Leeu Collection, Linthwaite House sits high on its own hill with gorgeous views across Lake Windermere and the Coniston Fells. Inside, it's very much a scene of modern, 21st-century luxury - think bold prints and wild colours, sumptuous armchairs and a fine selection of African art, all from the owner's personal collection. It's surrounded by 14 acres of garden and woodland that keep the rest of the world at arm's length, and when you're finished exploring, there's always a crackling log fire somewhere to cosy up to. Frankly, Wordsworth would have approved.