Independent hotels like this are the bedrock of British hospitality

About half the staff of The Priory have worked there for years, in some cases well over 20. It’s unusual to see older bar staff, waiters and waitresses in expensive hotels these days and they bring an immediate sense of dignified reassurance, a haven from the turbulent outside world. “I’ve known some of them since I was a small child,” says Katie, who with her brother Ben (the chap with the mustache) is very gradually taking over the reins from their father Jeremy Merchant. “They are family.”

With one dazzling exception, The Priory feels resolutely traditional, especially in the public rooms, decorated with pictures and furniture collected by Jeremy Merchant and his father before him. Do Ben and Katie, who looks after sales and marketing, want to change anything? Absolutely not, they say. Judicious improvements (the pond to become, hopefully, a wild swimming pool, a couple of treatment rooms and an outdoor sauna), nothing more.