How was your Christmas last year? Midnight Mass by candlelight in a 12th-century chapel? Convivial gatherings of friends and family around old oak tables laden with turkeys and rich, dark, steaming puddings? After-dinner strolls through frost-crisp fields and woodlands? Roaring fires?

Robins? Thought not. Not even one lousy robin, huh?

Maybe this year you should consider exchanging that single-glazed, frostbitten 2 LDK of yours for a thick slice of the seriously insulated good life. In Britain it goes under the name of a stay in a country house hotel.

If you have watched any of Merchant Ivory's sumptuous period pieces -- "The Remains of the Day," perhaps being the most appropriate for this article -- then the British country house needs no introduction. Its rolling lawns, croquet courts, pheasant woodlands, wild-fowl lakes and above all its elegant interiors, speak of a time when leisure was not just possible but the only option. Unless, of course, you were one of the myriad of scurrying servants. Or had to pay the horrendous bills for the thing's upkeep.

Which by the end of World War II, very few owners could adequately manage. Britain, at that time, was positively littered with grand old domiciles falling into dereliction and decay. And it was then, by happy coincidence, that the first country house hotel was opened by two demobbed Royal Air Force pilots in search of some well-deserved peace.

They found it in the form of a neglected, crumbling mansion beside Ullswater in the English Lake District. They then restored it to its former glory. Who knows, they may have even improved upon its former glory considerably. The Sharrow Bay, as it is still known, offered its guests delightfully decorated rooms, food of the first order, a lake on the doorstep and it very deliberately dispensed with check-in desks and other hotel-ish features. The idea was that guests should enjoy the illusion of ownership.

Sharrow Bay inspired imitation and as the century draws to its close there are now hundreds of beautiful buildings set in lovely gardens and parks restored to their earlier magnificence that would unquestionably have vanished had not sensitive tourism stepped in.

It is with regret that we confess that we have not stayed at every country house hotel in Britain and cannot therefore offer the definitive guide. The following places, though, may be of interest.

Llangoed Hall, in the Wye Valley, Wales: It was built in 1632, and refurbished by Bernard Ashley (founder of Laura Ashley).

A helicopter arrived on the back lawn during our stay, bearing a group of socialist tabloid newspaper executives who confirmed our opinion of the popular British press by then donning military outfits and running through the placid woodlands firing paint balls at each other. They left with the same bewildering rapidity with which they arrived, presumably to write global opinion-forming editorials.

Not much else of note occurred at Llangoed. It was our country house. We wallowed in its leather chairs reading books of the sort that are out of print but shouldn't be. We explored the nearby Brecon Beacons National Park. And if the sheep's brains served at dinner were a trifle too brainlike to be enjoyed with complete equanimity, they could not be accused of being anything other than traditional Welsh cuisine.

Sharrow Bay: The first country house hotel, and a place that has rather determinedly remained stuck in a period before our birth. We loved the rabbits scampering through the walled kitchen gardens, the views of the lake and fells (as hills and mountains are locally known) but there was something a trifle fussy about the place. British prime ministers seem to like staying here.

Also in the Lake District, perched on the lower slopes of Blencathra and overlooking Derwentwater, is Underscar Manor. This Italianate "villa" is run by a couple who made their pile selling egg and chips near Manchester airport. Underscar won the Good Food Guide Restaurant of the Year Award (1999) and its gardens are a refuge for Britain's red squirrel. Inspiration for Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin story, the red squirrel is disappearing or has disappeared in much of the country due partly to the introduction of the American gray squirrel -- a brasher, more aggressive breed. There are red squirrels in abundance here.

Middlethorpe Hall, five minutes drive from central York, has a ghost and lots of queer winding passages and creaky floorboards. A William III country house, it is set in 10 hectares of lovely gardens and abuts York race course making it a very charming base from which to lose one's shirt. The only other guest when we stayed there was a Norwegian. "This is the England I wanted to find," he said, summarizing the Middlethorpe atmosphere very neatly.

Bodysgallen Hall, 17th century, stands in 80 hectares of award-winning gardens and offers views of Snowdonia National Park and nearby Conwy Castle. Like Middlethorpe Hall, Bodysgallen is administered by Historic House Hotels Ltd., a company that goes to great pains restoring properties to historical standards and reinstating original architectural features.

"Original architectural features be damned," you are probably muttering, "how much is all this going to cost?" Welllll . . . the odd thing about country house hotels is that a night in many is no more expensive than a night in a mediocre London hotel. One hundred pounds or so.

Dinner is where some country house hotels grab you, turn you upside down and shake your pockets empty. A glance at Llangoed Hall's wine list shook me to the core. Quite put me off my sauteed sheep's brain it did!

Completely nerve-shattering was a glance at the tariffs for the four-night Christmas package at Cliveden. Cliveden overlooks one of the loveliest sections of the river Thames. It is undeniably one of England's finest stately homes. And the Cliveden Christmas promises to be a veritable orgy of mulled wine, mince pies and carol singers. But prices start at -- kef! -- 2,030 pounds (single) and don't stop until they hit 5,495 smackeroos for the Astor suite. Cliveden's Spring Cottage can accommodate up to six. Or you can have it all to yourself for -- ye gods! -- 9,440 pounds!