Bailiffscourt Hotel & Spa

Bailiffscourt can be taken on an exclusive use basis for a night, a weekend or a whole week. The booking covers all 39 bedrooms, the restaurant, the bar and lounges, and 30 acres of private parkland running down to Climping beach, including a 13th-century chapel. The hotel invites a party to dress the house as it wishes, and names VIP events, product launches and family celebrations among the occasions it hosts.

The house looks medieval and is not. It was built in 1927 for Lord Moyne, Walter Guinness of the brewing family, by the antiquarian architect Amyas Phillips, who searched the country for salvaged stone, timber, doors and fireplaces to assemble it. The Moynes entertained society here through the 1930s. It became a hotel in 1948, and Historic Sussex Hotels bought and restored it in 1993.

For a celebration short of the whole house there is a sequence of rooms with real character. The Music Room has a log fire, hung tapestries and mullioned windows on three sides, and seats 40 for dinner. The rose-clad inner courtyard takes 90 seated and 100 for a reception. The Chapel is licensed for ceremonies, and the painted-ceiling Card Room holds the smallest dinners. The spa and pools are not included in an exclusive use booking.