Simpson House Inn: Santa Barbara’s Secluded English Garden

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

In the second half of the 20th century, European home owners began offering their spare rooms to travelers. The idea was embraced in the British Isles by school teachers who, realizing Britain didn’t have the same reputation for cuisine as, say, France, concentrated on what is said to be the most important meal of the day: breakfast. The Brits coined the term “Bed & Breakfast” to send a new concept across the Atlantic. By 1980 there were a handful of B & Bs in the United States mostly in New England, the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Ten years later the US had 15,000. Now a website B & B planner lists 50,000 worldwide. 

B & Bs vary widely. We’ve stayed in stark high-rises in Manhattan in cluttered rooms where the usual occupant was apparently off to college and in Disney-decorated little princess rooms where someone was evidently away staying with Grandma. In some rural areas the rooms and prices compete with Motel 6. In more upscale areas the B & Bs compete with the local Four Seasons. 

As on the Santa Barbara Coast in California where two somewhat blasé travel writers who have seen everything, (“been there, done that,”) retrieved their travel innocence in a special place and discover a jewel -- in a destination itself a jewel, Santa Barbara. 

The gate swings open easily and the magic spills out. The sound of traffic, the hustle of a popular vacation city, the buzz of the fashionable “American Riviera” fades away. We are in a virtual oasis of peace and tranquility. We’re standing in the garden of the Simpson House Inn, the only AAA Five Diamond B & B in North America – and we don’t want to leave.

It’s a hot day and the shade is delightful. Iceberg roses lead our eyes throughout the property to kalanchoe, so popular in Europe, clustering around the gazebo’s umbrella and to begonias and hydrangeas, and upside-down, peach-colored blossoms of angel trumpet daturas. A 120 year-old English Oak, one of only .two so ancient in Santa Barbara County spreads its shade over all this where, equally protective, a 7 days a week gardener supervises his domain: the garden

Any belief we’re in an English garden is underscored when we step into the main house, a combination of a gentleman’s club and an English manor. Indeed the Simpson House is more than a Bed and Breakfast; it needs only a full restaurant to be truly called a country inn. The owners, Glyn and Linda Davies originally from Great Britain, had traveled a lot and kept notes on what, one day, they would incorporate in their ultimate home. The Italianate Victorian they bought in 1976 was built in 1874 by a Scottish couple, Robert and Julia Simpson. Santa Barbara had no wharf or coastal landing place at that time so the redwood, cut in Santa Cruz for the house, was simply dumped overboard from the sailing ship and floated to the shore.

The Dunn family bought the house in 1921. It had three more owners before the Davies saw its possibilities and restored the entire property. They carefully dismantled and reconstructed the 1876 barn in 1992, added the garden cottages in 1993 and rescued the acre of gardens. The restoration was painstaking: Linoleum was torn out and replaced with teak flooring. Designer wallpapers were ordered from Bradbury & Bradbury, a company that specializes in wall-coverings from the 1880s to the 1930s; some of the rooms had as many as 13 different patterns to such a degree the company sent a certified installer to handle the work. The Churchill china was brought over trip by trip from the UK every time the Davies visited their family farmhouse home in England’s Lake District.

Today, the Simpson house has 15 rooms, nine in the garden and six in the main house. The staff numbers 25 including Ruth Baez, the innkeeper for 12 years, Irma Mosqueda, the baker who has created her dessert pleasures for 16 years, Gillean Wilson, director of operations, who been with the inn since 1980 (which means she labored through the restoration – and that’s surely devoted service), and managing partner, Nick Davaz who came two and a half years ago. He had been general manager at the nearby, upscale El Encanto but when Orient-Express bought the property and closed it for three years of restoration he moved on to Simpson House.

Davaz is in his element. “We have the best guests because we have the best employees,” he says. “When we start new employees we tell them, ‘You are about to enjoy a unique experience. You will never see something like this again in your lifetime.’”

This is a story we hear all the time from luxury properties. You’d think hoteliers would feel location and history are the important keys to any hotel’s success but, when asked, managers almost always say, “Staff.” Davaz looks around and beams as his people attend to guests. He’s clearly a happy man.

Staying at the Simpson House Inn is not inexpensive; rates run from $235 to $615 per room per night high season weekends (Los Angeles is only 90 miles away and that keeps them busy especially at weekends) but prices drop somewhat to $200 to $450 winter mid-weeks (and Santa Barbara has mild winters). Davaz is demonstrating the inn’s collection of 300 films, some concealed as copies of Shakespeare’s plays stacked in an impressive library when he stops to address the issue of the inn’s value-added rates. He feels the extras probably save guests $150. These include free parking, gratuity free services, arrival refreshments (we had Irma’s sherry cake waiting for us in our room), complimentary bottled water and sodas with 24-hour hot and cold beverage service, free WiFi web connection, bicycles and croquet and beach equipment, soft large Egyptian towels, slippers and robes, afternoon tea, evening hors d’oevres with local wines, late night sweets, free room service, daily newspaper, classic traditional (and superb) cooked breakfast served in-room or in the main house and, if you borrow a DVD -- when you are ready, just ring the operator and someone will bring you popcorn.

No wonder this inn has won the Five Diamond award from AAA for ten years.

Santa Barbara, waiting for you outside the inn’s gates is a delightful city. It’s easily walked and most of the attractions lie within four blocks. The Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden sits kitty-corner with the inn. The mini-botanical garden was endowed and created in 1970 after the El Mirasol hotel burned down at that site. The beautiful Santa Barbara Courthouse, “ a timeless Spanish-Moorish masterpiece” is ten minutes’ walk to the south with the city’s captivating Museum of Art beside it (“In my opinion, the best selection of Monet’s on the West Coast,” says Davaz.)