Estelle Manor

Set with antique mirrors and emperor-sized beds, the bedrooms at Estelle Manor mix old furniture with modern comfort. The manor stands at the edge of the Cotswolds, in Eynsham Park near Witney. It is not a single building but a set of bedrooms, suites and cottages, each fitted out differently; the cottages add their own sitting rooms, suited to longer stays or family groups. Stone walls and old joinery run through the public rooms, a reminder of the house's age, though the fittings inside are new. Several restaurants and a bar occupy the ground floor, giving guests a choice of where to eat without leaving the grounds. Below or beside them, depending on the day, sits the wellness centre. Its centrepiece is a Roman-inspired spa built around the Eynsham Baths, with pools and steam rooms styled after Roman bathing halls rather than a standard hotel spa circuit. You can move between hot and cold rooms much as bathers did centuries ago, though the plumbing is entirely contemporary. It is a quiet, deliberate contrast: old stone and antique furniture set against underfloor heating and modern bathrooms. The result reads less like a themed hotel than a working country house updated room by room, with the spa as its most theatrical addition.