Review of Barnsley House, by Martin O'Brien

Midway between Cirencester and Bibury, "in the heart of Gloucestershire's Golden Triangle" (estate-agent speak, not mine), Barnsley House  has been around for a long time. Built in 1697 by a local landowner, the property has spent most of the last three centuries as a country rectory, a comfortable 'living' for a line of parish incumbents that stretches back to the reign of William and Mary.

In 1951, however, the house passed into non-clerical hands and became the family home of Rosemary Verey, who began work on what is now considered probably the finest country garden in the land. Listed by English Heritage, it was frequently visited by The Prince of Wales whose consultations with - and friendship and respect for - Rosemary Verey provided much of the inspiration for his own horticultural endeavors.

English country house hotels traditionally provide a twee tourist hotch-potch of four-poster-bed and chintz-and-cream-tea clichés, but the new owners have transformed this grand old manor house into a state-of-the-art, twenty-first-century English country home, its dark, shadowy and creaking interior sleekly, sensitively and sumptuously re-upholstered.

At the Village Pub, no more than a couple of hundred yards from the front gates of Barnsley House, and with the same owners, food has always been as crucial a component as style (no Ginster Cornish pasties here, no sweating sarnies or salty pork scratchings). Aided and abetted by veteran Italian chef Franco Taruschio has created a seasonal Italian menu that plunders Rosemary Verey's potager and kitchen garden to sensational effect.

Accompanying dew-fresh salads and lightly-grilled vegetables are classic Bresaolas home-cured on the premises, truffled tangles of Tagliolini, Cappelletti in brodo, and the house's signature Vincisgrassi - a lusciously layered pasta dish stuffed with Parma ham, porcini and truffles and baked al forno.

Here, spread over two floors of the main house and in the attached coach-house, are nine ludicrously comfortable, Italian-styled guestrooms each equipped with the kind of bathroom you never want to leave - roll-top baths (a pair, side by side, in my bathroom), walk-in showers with powered shower-heads wide enough to drench a sumo wrestler, the towels and towelling robes thicker, richer and more swaddling than a polar bear's pelt.

Add to this, seven-foot beds equipped with fibre-optic reading lights, top-of-the-range Bose surround-sound systems, Panasonic plasma screens and home cinema DVDs and ISDN links, and you have some idea of the extent of this magical makeover. Not forgetting the mini-bar, of course, with its complimentary champagne, home-made chocolates and freshly-squeezed orange juice.