You can now stay in a cottage at Walmer Castle in Kent, where the Queen Mother liked to holiday, courtsey of English Heritage - which this year is opening up eight more cottages for rent.

Or you could sleep under the barreled-roof of a lock cottage on the South Stratford Canal, newly available for rent from the Landmark Trust, which is also opening another cottage, in Bedfordshire.

All three are newly available in 2007. And they are being joined by dozens more properties as Britain's heritage custodians rapidly open up their castles and towers to tourists.

It works for all: we get a far greater choice of quality, idiosyncratic holiday homes in great locations, while the country's heritage guardians receive more income and the satisfaction of showing off their work to more and sundry.

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• English Heritage - new cottages to rent in 2007

English Heritage only started renting out cottages last year, with five properties including the Sgt Major's House at Dover Castle. This year is has added eight more, having found an incredible rental appetite for its properties, which meant they were some 90 per cent full in 2006.

Its cottage at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, is booked out 18 months in advance, understandably exciting the good folk at EH, which now plans to open 30 cottages for rent by the end of next year.

It's possibly the most exciting development in British tourism. I myself stayed at a Landmark Trust Martello fort in Suffolk two years ago for a wedding. It was a weekend in February but we still had to book months in advance to secure the property. And it was a great success, becoming party central on the open roof for two nights.

I want to stay in more and have earmarked John Betjeman's former London home in Cloth Fair (Landmark Trust) this year. Also attractive is the Jacobean brick tower at Blicking Hall, Norfolk, which is new from National Trust Cottages, as is Portbraddan Cottage within the Giant’s Causeway, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Northern Ireland.

The National Trust has 13 new cottages this year to add to its portfolio of 350; Landmark Trust adds two to its collection of 184 and English Heritage has grown to 13 cottages. A fourth body, the Vivat Trust , also has 12 rentals in historic buildings.

And the growth of quality holiday rentals doesn't stop there. The Youth Hostel Association, now referred to simply as the YHA, has for some years been upgrading its properties. A travel article in The Times two years ago described its properties as "simplicity with style."

This year, the brand new £3m YHA Abbey House is opening in Whitby, North Yorkshire and another in at Moira, East Midlands which will be the third of its "green beacon" hostels, an eco-friendly centre in national forest. Meanwhile, work continues on YHA London Central in the City of Westminster.

What with B&Bs rapidly upgrading their product, the choice of quality British holiday accommodation has never looked so attractive.

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