Thatched cottage hotel in Dorset for sale

The chance to buy an award-winning Dorset hotel and restaurant housed in a thatched cottage has come to the market.

Yalbury Cottage hotel is a Grade II-listed hotel and restaurant in the hamlet of Little Bockhampton, which is close to the market town of Dorchester and eight miles from the Dorset coast.

It benefits from the 20,000 annual tourists attracted by the region's link with novelist Thomas Hardy, who was born in a cottage in nearby Higher Bockhampton.

The property, which is 300 years old, is believed to have been the home of the local shepherd and keeper of the surrounding water meadows. A bedroom wing was added in 1989.

Yalbury Cottage provides eight en-suite letting bedrooms which have achieved a five AA-star rating and a two AA-rosette, 24-seat restaurant that was voted the Best Restaurant of the Year in the 2006 Dorset Food and Drink Awards.

Other facilities include a residents' lounge, a self-contained two-bedroom owners' flat and a garden with an ornamental pond that backs onto farmland.

The Winchester office of Christie + Co is inviting offers in the region of £865,000 for the freehold.

By Angela Frewin