Proprietor: Karolyn Kauntze

This apparently modest old house is a surprise: it unfolds to reveal a place of grandeur. It has a vast flourish of a dining hall, a tower, a pigeon loft and fascinating hosts who are an unusual mix of shyness, extroversion and humour. Wisteria clads the courtyard, trees shelter the garden, beams sail above the canopied bed of a tower room - the whole house overflows with character. Come breathe the thyme-wafted air of a venerable hillside village.