Best hotels in Dorset to enjoy one of the UK’s prettiest counties

Dorset, as the farmers and wine-makers will tell you, changes character with the seasons in theatrical fashion. In winter, the countryside morphs into a Ye Olde England Christmas card and ruddy-faced country pubs pull local drafts and stoke spitting log fires. In the more cosmopolitan stretches, restaurants, bars and theatre thrive in the dark brooding evenings, from Bournemouth to Bridport, where burgeoning art scenes are afoot.

Spring is Dorset’s finest coat, particularly in the countryside where bluebells carpet woodland, primroses and daffodils line snaking lanes and beach walks are fresh and bracing. Before long, brittle grass crunches under wellies and ice cream shops lining the coast fling open. Then, rather abruptly, autumn paints the landscape in shades of gold and rust then gunpowder clings to the cool air as people fill gastro-pub tables with game and trophy cod.

This is Thomas Hardy country; a land of seventh-generation fishermen and farmers whose ancestors inspired Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. A puritanical approach to provenance is written into Dorset’s DNA, by necessity, not fashionable philosophy. And Dorset has for so long been wonderfully unfashionable, a rush of green en route to Devon and Cornwall, in the shadow of Somerset’s clipped bohemia – exquisitely scruffy and worlds away from the Soho House set.

From eccentric cliff-top boltholes to squire-like townhouses with secret walled gardens, here are the best hotels in Dorset.

For more inspiration on where to stay in the UK, visit:

The best hotels in Cornwall
The best hotels in Devon
The best family-friendly hotels in Cornwall
The best countryside hotels near London
The best hotels in the Cotswolds
The best pubs with rooms in the UK