The Best Hotels to Book Near Belton House

There’s a hint of English country house about Belton Woods, a stylish, secluded country resort that lures in golfers with two PGA Championship-approved courses, and fans of peace and quiet with sprawling acres of grounds. The inviting rooms have an early midcentury feel, and the superior rooms bring in elegant wooden furniture and mood-calming views over golf courses or woodland. Best of all, it’s right across the road from Belton House.

Graceful, double-gabled Allington Manor is even older than it looks. It floats between centuries, with rooms styled for the house’s former residents, from the lord and lady of the house to the servants who kept them comfortable. The most lavish rooms have William Morris wallpaper, sleigh beds and fireplaces topped by ancient oil paintings, but the most characterful rooms are the servants quarters tucked into the eaves under a tumble of ancient beams.

A sprinkle of houses amidst green fields, the village of Knipton warrants closer inspection. Edging into the fields, brick-built Manners Arms is a calm country escape, with a heart-warming menu of traditional British cuisine served in an updated, wood-floored dining room. The rooms are country-style and cosy, with attractive wooden furniture and views over the farmland where some of the foodstuffs served here are grown and raised. For bonus stately home action, Belvoir Castle is just 2mi (3km) to the north.

You can glide up the gravel drive of this handsome country house like the lord of the manor. Stubton Hall stands at the end of a reflecting pool surrounded by greenery, and the rooms are as striking as the curving frontage – huge, open spaces, with four-poster beds, heirloom oil paintings and daring design details like birch forest wallpaper and crockery transformed into wall ornaments. Every room has its own atmosphere, so look at them all before you decide.

The stone-fronted Houblon Arms is as quintessentially Lincolnshire as the flat farmland that circles the village of Oasby, but it’s no slouch on the comfort front when you step inside. Downstairs is a refined restaurant with a menu that roams from mushroom, cranberry and brie Wellington to teriyaki pork – upstairs are enveloping rooms with lathe-turned bed posts, oak cabinets, vintage prints and private hot tubs.

There’s not much more to the village of Buckminster than Buckminster Farm, but the inviting village pub is well worth investigating. The Tollemache Arms covers all the essentials – a cosy bar with well-stocked taps, a friendly restaurant serving rare roast meats – and adds in surprises such as a calm library for reading and comfortable, country-style bedrooms with sleek, modern bathrooms and cockles-warming underfloor heating.

Grantham is the gateway to Lincolnshire, and the Angel & Royal is one of its finest places to stay. Travellers have been calling into this historic inn for 800 years, and the mysterious Knights Templar had a hand in its earliest incarnation. It’s been modernised, but not too much, so rooms still hint at the building’s long history – with antique furniture, arched doorways and bunched drapes enfolding four-poster beds. Coats of armour adorn the refined restaurant, which once hosted kings of England.