Quinta do Bom Despacho is a family business focused on positive impact. We believe that small businesses integrated into the community, with short, localised value chains, are the skeleton of a regenerative economy.
Motivate daily action for sustainability, happiness and well-being.
To provide comfortable, ecological spaces that people can enjoy and learn from during their time with us.
Six people make things happen around here.
We all share the understanding that life should be simple and uncomplicated, and that sustainability is achieved on a daily basis.
Quinta do Bom Despacho is a name that goes back to the century. XVII and whose story begins with Gaspar Dias, a successful Jewish merchant and ancestor of the Borges Coutinho family. Gaspar Dias and his family were of Jewish descent, which made him a regular target of the Inquisition and a barrier to integration into the society of the time.
They needed a “Royal Charter for the Cleansing of Blood”, which conferred on them the status of New Christians. Gaspar Dias made a promise to build the “Ermida do Bom Despacho” (Chapel of the Good Dispatch) when he obtained this letter, which was essential to his good name. Gaspar’s promise was later fulfilled and the chapel was built by his descendants, as well as the house that still exists today, leaving the “Paim” area known as “the place of Bom Despacho”.
Unfortunately, the chapel was destroyed in the mid-19th century, but the name remained. Even today, “Bom Despacho” is used to refer to the house and the land that surrounds it. Although it remained in the same family for more than 400 years, Quinta do Bom Despacho was uninhabited for many years and degraded to a state of ruin by the end of the 20th century. XX.
António Eduardo Borges Coutinho, the second grandson of the 2nd Marquis of Praia and Monforte (better known to us as “avô Toni”), inherited Quinta do Bom Despacho. He decided to restore it as a family home when the Marquês da Praia palace in the centre of Ponta Delgada was expropriated.
The restoration work took place between 1981 and 1984, under his direction and that of his two sons, António and Francisco, who had recently returned from military service in Angola and Mozambique.
In the spring of 1984, Quinta do Bom Despacho was ready. Francisco, his wife and two daughters were the first to sleep in the “new house”. Shortly afterwards, his brother Antonio and his family gathered in the west wing. The parents (António and Conceição) settled on the ground floor of the manor house they shared with their daughters in the summer. For more than two decades, the property was a winter refuge for those who lived there and a summer paradise for an army of grandchildren, cousins and uncles, lunches on hot days and long family afternoons and evenings.
In 2014, Joana and Susana, two of António Borges Coutinho’s twelve grandchildren, set off a new cycle for the property and the family by proposing an innovative project: transforming the property into an Eco-Tourism lodge. Major work was carried out on the house and its exterior to modernise the infrastructure and create extensive gardens with ecological vegetable plots and permaculture design, which allow the space to offer environmental education.
On the Summer Solstice of 2015, Quinta do Bom Despacho opened its doors to the public and welcomed its first guests. Since then Susana has left to explore the world outside the island and the Quinta has been run by Joana and her husband Jaime, alongside their two sons Francisco and Manuel.
Today, Quinta do Bom Despacho is a benchmark for sustainability on the island and in the archipelago. We are proud of the history of the family and the manor house, and now also of conscious entrepreneurship.