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It may be only 35 miles from London's Hyde Park Corner but the journey to Gravetye Manor, hidden away in the folds of the Sussex Downs, has more to do with time than distance. You don't just leave the capital behind; you effectively leave the twentieth century with it. Soften your focus, breathe in that heady scent of seasoned logs crackling in Gravetye's open stone fireplaces, feel the ancient oak panelling wrap itself around you like a cherished comforter and you could be forgiven for believing in time travel. Only an hour away from the city by car, yet Gravetye Manor somehow contrives not only to relieve you of all your cares, but the last 400 years to boot. It is an admirable and seductive deceit.

Overlooking a wooded valley, set amidst 30 acres of prime old-English real estate and surrounded by many more acres of Forestry Commission Land, Gravetye Manor is unrepentantly and magnificently sixteenth century. Behind creeper-clad walls, pointed gables, and mullioned windows is a world where the twentieth century is given house room only so far as it promises to ensure the comfort, ease and well-being of its guests. Even the recent addition of a new wing fails dismally to compromise Gravetye's carefully preserved Elizabethan provenance, built as it is in the same style as the original house and using the same materials.

More than anything Gravetye means pampered escape. The ground floor rooms are generously furnished, warm and welcoming, the Gravetye staff whisper-soft in their ministrations, while its eighteen bedrooms are so plumply comfortable and well-appointed, with such marvellous views of the grounds, that it's something of a sacrifice to leave them each morning. Dozing by the fire in an armchair big enough to swallow you up in a single gulp, playing croquet on lawns laid out in the nineteenth-century by one of England's leading landscape gardeners, or fishing for trout on Gravetye's own four-acre lake, the unseemly pressures of the twentieth century are kept rigourously and gloriously at bay.

On the edge of the New Forest, close enough to the English coast to smell salt in the air, the Chewton Glen is another much sought-after weekend hideaway. Built of mellowed Georgian brick and set amidst lawns as green as billiard baize, this classic Palladian-style country house may be younger than Gravetye, dating only from the early 1700s, but is no less memorable for that. As at Gravetye, the quiet elegance of its many drawing and reading rooms, the exceptional courtesy and attentiveness of its staff and the renowned, almost Bacchic temptations of its dining room are easily enough to satisfy the most demanding and scrupulous of tastes.

Bedrooms are equally luxurious, particularly the dozen or more delightfully-appointed garden suites and coach-house duplexes, all of them richly swagged and boldly patterned, with decanters of sherry thoughtfully provided for weary travellers, swaddling bathrobes you could easily get lost in and bathrooms to match. As well as its brace of swimming pools - the latest indoor model heated, ozone-filtered and decorated with intriguing trompe l'oeil murals - Chewton Glen also has a fully-equipped health centre with gymnasium, steam room, saunas and a wide range of health and beauty treatments. Just the ticket after a round of golf on Chewton Glen's 9-hole course, a few sets on their indoor tennis courts or a gruelling assault on the a la carte.

Close enough to the city to allow easy weekend access but far enough away to justify its country house status, Hartwell House has only recently opened as an hotel. Built in about 1600, but altered by three leading Georgian architects (Gibbs, Keane and Wyatt), Hartwell has played host to Louis XVIII and his emigree court during his exile from France, acted as a billet for British and American troops during the Second World War and, more recently, provided those all-important finishing touches in its role as an exclusive girls' school.

In 1989, after years of gradual decline, Hartwell was finally taken over by Historic House Hotels whose aim it is to preserve and restore historically and architecturally important properties, and to provide the means for their continued survival. In short order the strip lighting was, well, stripped away and replaced with glittering chandeliers, its decorative eighteenth century plasterwork by Bagutti and Artari meticulously restored, and its many stately drawing rooms and morning rooms expertly and sensitively renovated. As for the bedrooms, they are either magnificently grand on the main first floor with period furnishings and four-poster beds, or cosily low-ceilinged under the eaves, the whole house suitably furnished with appropriate antiques, tapestries, oil paintings and richly damasked hangings.

Like Gravetye Manor, the abiding atmosphere here is of a stately country home rather than luxury hotel, its guests made to feel like personal family friends at liberty to enjoy the many and varied pleasures of this marvellous house and its spreading parkland. Not, it should be said, that this is taken as an excuse to provide anything less than luxury services. And like Chewton Glen, Hartwell has the latest health club facilities and a well-equipped gymnasium to ease the consciences, if not wholly trim the figures, of its pampered clientele.

Only 25 minutes from the gates of Hartwell House, in the Oxfordshire village of Great Milton, stands Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons. A beautifully proportioned fifteenth-century manor house, built with honey-coloured stone and set snugly amidst elegantly structured grounds, Le Manoir is one of the most sumptuous country house hotels in Great Britain, its restaurant critically acclaimed as the country's finest. Bristling with assorted stars, rosettes, medals and toques, this delightful retreat is also one of only nine hotels in the world, and the only one in Great Britain, to hold both the Gold and Red shields of the prestigious Relais et Chateaux chain - their highest classification for a hotel and restaurant.

The dream and inspiration of one man, chef-proprietor Raymond Blanc, Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons carries off with consummate skill and artistry that devilishly perilous balancing act of maintaining both a supremely rated hotel and a world-renowned restaurant. The result, for its fortunate guests, is little short of a stunning tour de force. The drawing rooms are splendidly accoutred, the 19 bedrooms individually designed and lavishly furnished and its restaurant is, simply, second to none. With unexpected Gallic restraint, Monsieur Blanc describes Le Manoir as "the perfect classic marriage between a beautiful English house and French cuisine." If ever there was a marriage blessed in heaven, this is surely it.

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