Ken and Ruth Hunt have spent the last 17 years welcoming guests to Combe House, a Grade I listed Elizabethan Manor with an award-winning restaurant.

The owners of a widely-respected and popular Gittisham hotel are set to bid farewell after planning to return to Australia.

Ken and Ruth Hunt have spent the last 17 years welcoming guests to Combe House, a Grade I listed Elizabethan Manor with an award-winning restaurant.

They are now passing the mantle on to Home Grown Hotels, a personal collection of four properties, each called ‘The Pig’ and all based in the south of England.

In November, the Hunts plan to return to Sydney to be closer to their family and set up a new home before embarking on some more adventures.

Ken said: “It’s been an incredible journey. We have been very lucky and along the way we have made many strong friendships with guests, suppliers and our wonderful team of staff.

“From the bottom of our hearts we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone, and we hope that they also share special memories of their times spent at Combe – which really is ‘somewhere different, somewhere special’.”

Combe House is set to undergo a facelift as part of the process - closing for six months in mid-October for a major investment, restoration and expansion programme, before reopening in May 2016.

Its name will also be changed to The Pig at Combe, to match the branding of Home Grown Hotels’ other properties - The Pig in the Forest at Brockenhurst, Hampshire, The Pig near Bath, The Pig In The Wall in Southampton and The Pig on the Beach at Studland Bay, Dorset.