Newmarket

Newmarket Holiday Cottage is the biggest and grandest of all the cottages. All the bedrooms have ensuite shower or bath rooms, with marble-topped washstands.

The entrance is to the right of the central arches - you go straight into an enormous open-plan drawing-room/dining-room/kitchen with a high ceiling and large, well proportioned windows. It is decorated in elegant Gustavian style, with pale grey walls, off-white rugs and off-white or grey painted woodwork. The greys are warmed up by rosy pink Victorian cranberry glass on the white fireplace, rose-and-white checked Colefax & Fowler fabric on one sofa, rose-and-white cushions on the off-white sofa, and red lacquer oriental boxes for trays and magazines.

There are a couple of elegant French fauteuils in tones of warm pink, and the floor-length curtains are cream Ian Mankin cotton, overchecked in rose. Light sparkles off crystal sconces each side of the fireplace and old pressed glass plates, and reflects from the large silver-framed looking glass.

The dining and kitchen part of the room are floored in mellow York stone, setting off the refectory table with its old pine top, and the white antique chairs, cushioned in rose-and-white Marvic fabric.

The kitchen boasts ultra-modern technology - a large US style side-by-side fridge-freezer with dispensers for ice and chilled water, and a big stainless steel Britannia range cooker with two electric ovens and six burners. But the general effect, thanks to the beech work surfaces, the Belfast sink and the soft white Shaker units, is warm and homely.

Off the drawing-room is a double bedroom and ensuite shower-room ideal for wheelchair users. Both are papered and curtained in a ravishing Nina Campbell chinoiserie design, mauve on white. There's a 4'6'' antique wrought iron French bed, a spoon backed lime green French upholstered chair, and a regency pen-work cabinet in ivory on black. The shower-room has grab-rails by both lavatory and shower, a low basin and plenty of room to manoeuvre a wheelchair.

Upstairs, the handsome master bedroom has a masculine air - with its mahogany four-poster, bureau and the 18th century card tables flanking the bed. Curtains and bedhangings are in a gold, ivory and tan Colefax & Fowler cotton, and old prints and needlework pictures deck the walls.

One of the twin bedrooms has fabric covered walls in cool off-white-and-green toile de jouy with matching curtains. The off-white beds, picked out in green, were copied from an 18th century original found by John Fowler, and look wonderful with a curly rococo mirror.

The room next door has two single off-white faux bamboo four-posters with cream cotton bedhangings, which stand out crisply against the blue-and-white John Stefanides papered walls that form a background for gold-framed animal prints and gilded mirrors.

We reserve the parking space nearest the courtyard for the use of Newmarket, and there's a paved path across the gravel in the courtyard, which makes access to the car park and walled garden easy.