Mansion House, Scarborough

Mansion House is a small five-star guest house on the Esplanade at South Cliff, the quiet Victorian terrace running along the top of Scarborough's South Bay. Dogs are welcome in designated rooms, and what guests travelling with dogs tend to notice is that the welcome extends past the booking: biscuits and a dog towel laid on for the dog, and the sense that the dog was made as welcome as the people it arrived with.

Dog-friendly rooms are a specific subset of the house rather than the whole of it, and they are arranged on request, so flag the dog when you book rather than on the day. The charge is £15 per night for a pet. Beyond that the property publishes no weight limit and no cap on numbers, which makes a larger dog or a second one a conversation to have directly rather than an assumption to make.

The location does a lot of the work. The Esplanade is a level clifftop walk in both directions, the cliff gardens drop down towards the seafront, and the South Bay sands are close enough for a first-thing-in-the-morning outing. Scarborough operates seasonal restrictions on parts of its beaches, so check the current rules for the stretch you plan to use before you travel.

Rooms are consistently described as clean and comfortable, breakfast draws praise, and the overall guest score sits at 9.3/10 across nearly 700 reviews. At £15 a night the pet charge is modest but not nothing on a longer stay, and room availability is the real constraint rather than the policy. For a couple or a solo traveller wanting a comfortable seafront base in Scarborough with a well-behaved dog along, Mansion House earns its 4.6/5 paw rating.