The hotel: outside my room at Chewton Glen is a corridor set-dressed with antique croquet mallets, catgut tennis rackets, mashies and niblicks. Beyond it, there’s a drawing room with sumptuous floral sofas and grand pianos, strafed by cool spring sunlight through the French windows. The hotel has a gentlemen’s bar, wallpapered in burgundy suede, and a hallway with nine pairs of spotless wellingtons (all green). The reception team don’t wear stripy blazers and monocles, but it may only be a matter of time.

Right from the off, you feel a sense of occasion here. Approached along a regulation sweeping drive, Chewton Glen reclines beneath a very long horizon — Palladian-style mansion at one end, porticoed health spa at the other. It’s got a weatherboarded clock tower, topiary statues and wide acres of delectably dewy lawns. Staff outnumber guests by almost two to one — I suspect that they sprinkle on the dew by hand each morning.

Even outdoors, Chewton is primped and perfect: you feel that every wisp of ivy, every “crumbling” folly, has been finessed into position. Indoors, the hotel is like your unspeakably rich aunt — traditionally dressed, consummately conservative, but never less than immaculately maintained. At these prices, you’d expect nothing less.

So it’s old-fashioned, then? It is working the Jeeves and Wooster shtick, certainly, but the facilities are bang up to date. There’s a schizophrenic moment when you step out of the plus-fours and flying-goggles era and into robe-and-slippers territory — the hotel spa is a model of modish sophistication. It has a “grooming lounge”, a Roman-themed hydrotherapy pool, complete with sub-aqua statues of classical nymphs, and an outdoor whirlpool that Bertie’s Aunt Agatha wouldn’t approve of one bit.

Every hotel guest receives a bulletin inviting them to participate in assorted types of bodily assault: perhaps an “upper-body sculpt with Ria”, or an “ab attack with Stuart”. Alternatively, you can book a personal trainer and have your torture tailor-made. The spa stuff doesn’t feel out of place, though, because Chewton Glen’s atmosphere is much closer to country club than country house: alongside the croquet, it offers a tennis centre (with resident pro), a jogging course, a snooker room and a par-three golf course. Top hole, as Gussie Fink-Nottle would say.

What about the rooms? Not sure how they’ve managed this, but the bedrooms succeed in being at once chintzy and chic. Contemporary country, I think they call it. There are 35 of them, plus 23 suites, mostly done in tasteful clarets, olives and creams, and mostly vast. If you’re one of those people who can’t stop tidying up after yourself in expensive hotel rooms (perhaps it’s just me), Chewton will almost certainly cure you — its sprawling spaces dare you to leave clothes, towels, newspapers and inhibitions trailing in your wake.

My shower was as big as two bathtubs (presumably for people who like to shower lying down), with a robe so heavy it could ground you for days. There’s a Bang & Olufsen CD player that slides open by magic when you get within three paces, and (smarter still) the in-room music library eschews David Gray and Dido in favour of Johnny Cash and Bumble Bee Slim. Now that’s class. There’s something inexpressibly decadent about listening to Big Bill Broonzy sing Bricks in My Pillow, while spraying Molton Brown Air of Sleep around your bedroom and slumping into post-dinner, bathrobe-based bliss.

What was for dinner? Duck foie gras with lentils and bacon foam, followed by roast scallops with wild mushroom sauce. The head chef, Luke Matthews, styles his food “classic French in a light and healthy style”. Sounds like a contradiction, but, like the hotel itself, it basically means taking country staples and making them all fresh and sunlit and exuberant.

Breakfast in the conservatory restaurant also feels like an occasion. On arrival, I was descended upon by a Swat team of morning-suited waiters — maîtres d, e and f, perhaps. And it’s the only time I’ve eaten a £20 “continental breakfast” that succeeded in being worth the money.

“Why not start the day as you mean to go on,” said the menu, “with half a bottle of Gosset?” Ignoring the implication that I’m a raving dipso, I thought I just might.

And beyond the grounds? You’ll find the New Forest, a quintessentially British landscape where girls called Olivia ride tiny ponies through sun-dappled woodland on their way to doily-decked tearooms. On cold days, the forest’s open moorlands are the ideal place to chill your cheeks into rosy luminosity — you can defrost them over a hot toddy at the Oak Inn, in Bank, or the Royal Oak, in Fritham.

If you fancy a more formal “visitor experience”, Beaulieu, with its second world war spy exhibition and vintage-car museum, is only a dozen miles away. Or, if you just want a sprinkle of salt air on top of your foie gras and scallops, a 20-minute walk through the hotel grounds brings you out onto the esplanade at Christchurch Bay. Keep going, westwards, beside the beach to Mudeford Quay, stacked with lobster pots and whiffy with authentic sea-dog atmosphere.

• Chewton Glen Hotel, Spa and Country Club (01425 275341, www.chewtonglen.com) has doubles from £290, room-only; three-course dinner £62.50. Overnight spa breaks, including dinner, unlimited use of the spa and two one-hour treatments, start at £299pp. The hotel also offers midweek specials, themed for gourmets, golfers and tennis players, from £269pp
  
  

The Montagu Arms Hotel, New Forest, Hampshire

Sam Lyster finds a country hotel where the service is second to none

BACKGROUND

• Chewton Glen, New Forest, Hampshire

• Master Builder's House, New Forest, Hampshire

• Rhinefield House, Brockenhurst, Hampshire

Related Internet Links

• More hotels in the New Forest

Related Links

• Master Builder's House, New Forest, Hampshire

• Rhinefield House, Brockenhurst, Hampshire

Times recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winners