A comfy home away from home

TWO hotels are to open this year at Heathrow and Gatwick airports outside London, offering accommodations in compact, luxuriously fitted capsules, like first-class airline cabins. The idea intrigues me, but not enough to change my mind about St. Margaret’s, an old-fashioned budget hotel in Bloomsbury and my favorite place to stay in London.

Like hotel prices everywhere, the rates at St. Margaret’s have gone up since my first visit in 1995. Then, a shared-bath double on the top floor cost about $75 a night and included a full English breakfast.

When I checked in in December, a double on the third floor with a private bath -- the owners have added private baths in nine out of the 60 rooms -- cost about $163.

But in all the essential ways, St. Margaret’s is the same as it was a decade ago, which is what draws me back. The hotel occupies four distinguished Georgian-style row houses built around 1800 on Bedford Place between Russell and Bloomsbury squares, near the British Museum and the University of London. It is, to my mind, an excellent location.

On the first floor, lounges have deep-cushioned chairs, and a breakfast room is all starched white napery. To get to the guest chambers upstairs, arranged along a maze of hallways separated by glass fire doors, you must climb steep, carpeted staircases because there is no elevator. Each room is modestly furnished -- an antique wardrobe here and an upholstered armchair there -- well-lighted, freshly painted and perfectly comfortable, if not always spacious. Sheets are crisp; towels are soft. The baths, both private and shared, are immaculate.

It isn’t much different from any other small, independently owned budget hotel in the city of London.

But it has one significant distinction: Rosanna Marazzi, its diminutive, dark-haired mistress, who lives on the premises with her husband, Battista, known as Tino.

Their daughter, Debora, and sons Alex and Lawrence are often on hand, dispensing keys and information, but it is Rosanna -- calm and capable, warm, but professional -- who sets the tone. Day by day, she makes sure St. Margaret’s is well kept and running smoothly.

Over the years I’ve been staying there, I’ve wondered whether St. Margaret’s is really “Fawlty Towers,” the British sitcom about a wacky hostelry. So on my last visit, I sat down to tea with Rosanna and Tino to find out what it’s really like running St. Margaret’s, why they got into the business and how -- in these days of capsule hotels -- they envision its future.

When did you open St. Margaret’s?

Rosanna: Tino’s parents took the lease in 1952. I came to London from Italy, near Parma, when I was 23 to study English. I had trained as an elementary schoolteacher and looked after the children of Tino’s sister. We married in 1967.

Tino: My family came to England from Piacenza, near Parma, in the early 1900s. In the war, I was interned for 4 1/2 years because I came from Italy. I am English, but most of all a Londoner.

There were many boarding houses in this area. My mother thought my father wasn’t making enough money, so she opened one. It’s a lot of work, 24 hours a day, not for someone who just wants to make money. It becomes part of your life.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you didn’t live at the hotel?

Rosanna: We have an apartment across the street and sometimes I say to Tino, “We must try to sleep there.” But we have to be here to supervise. If there is an emergency, a staff member can ring our bell.

Will your children carry on at St. Margaret’s after you retire?

Rosanna: Yes, I think Debora and Lawrence will. They like the work.

How have things changed here over the years?

Tino: We used to have coal heating. And we got televisions and phones.

Rosanna: Before that, we had phone boxes. Once, a professor had to make an emergency call but a woman was on the phone chatting. He got very annoyed and told her off. The next morning at breakfast she apologized. Then they fell in love and married. He was sad when we got telephones in the rooms. “Why did you take out the boxes?” he wanted to know.

What kinds of people stay at St. Margaret’s?

Rosanna: Lots of academics, being so near the university. At one time, the Royal College of Surgeons was refurbishing, so we got many of their people. Now we have anesthesiology students taking exams.

Tino: Businessmen come up to the city once a week and stay here. For a time, we had tomato producers from Portugal who came in the winter and directed their tomato-selling business from the hotel. A curator at the British Museum stayed here for four years. But most of our guests are American tourists.

What do they say about the hotel?

Rosanna: The majority of them are pleased. But on the Internet we have gotten a few negative comments. One lady said her pillow was lumpy. More and more people want private baths. My children get very sensitive when they see these comments. But we cannot be 100% perfect all the time, and people must be sensible. At these prices, they can’t expect the Savoy. St. Margaret’s is a safe, clean place to stay, where people are treated kindly.

How have your guests changed over the years?

Tino: They demand more now. Before, people wouldn’t dream of asking for a private bath. Americans had a bad reputation, always with a long list of things they wanted. But once we explained how it is at St. Margaret’s, they never got angry.

Rosanna: There are a number of people I’ve grown very fond of over the years. We had an American lady who wasn’t too happy in Detroit. After staying here she told me, “I think I’ve found a place where I want to live for the rest of my life.”

That was Miss Margaret Tossy. She stayed for 23 years. She had her own breakfast table and her own little corner in the sitting room. She had a wonderful life.

Two years before she died, I found a retirement home for her. It was beautiful, much better than St. Margaret’s. But when I visited her, she said, “Thank goodness. You’ve come to take me home. This is a terrible place. Everyone here is old.”

In her will, she asked to be buried at St. Margaret’s. Her ashes are in the garden.

Have you had any mishaps?

Rosanna: I used to watch “Fawlty Towers” and say to myself it never happens like that. Once, we lost a lady who was meeting her husband at the hotel. He chose the room, but it wasn’t ready when she arrived, so she went to sleep in another one without telling the girl at the front desk. When her husband got here later, we couldn’t find her. I went through some very difficult moments with that.

Then there was the time a man who was checking in asked, “Where are the restrooms?”

But the clerk thought he said restaurants, not restrooms, and answered, “There are none here.”

“What are the guests supposed to do?” he said, alarmed.

“On the next street, there are lots of them,” she replied.

“But what if you have to go out at night?” he asked, getting cross.

“You do what you like,” she said.

I heard it all from the back room. It was so funny I could hardly bear to stop it.

What are your plans for the future?

Rosanna: We are going to add more private baths and open another hotel on Russell Square, the Celtic. It will be a little more upscale than St. Margaret’s, but with the same family spirit.

With so many fancy new hotels coming to London, do you worry that small, family-owned places like St. Margaret’s will someday be a thing of the past?

Tino: There should always be dignified places like this in a nice area, even in the heart of London.

Rosanna: Sometimes in those new places, they miss the lovely little things, apart from quality. Yes, you have every amenity, but they direct you to the Tube and that’s all. If hotels like this one disappear someday, the real spirit of hospitality will disappear too.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.

*

Budget, but better

St. Margaret’s Hotel, 26 Bedford Place, London; 011-44-20-7636-4277, www.stmargaretshotel.co.uk; shared-bath doubles about $116, private-bath doubles about $163 to $176, both including breakfast.