It was a story fit for the pages of a Hollywood screenplay, with a California actor moving to a town in north Manchester to restore his dilapidated ancestral home.
But Hopwood DePree’s romance plot has transformed instead to a horror, after he found himself locked out the building he was restoring, and now battling the local council in court for possession of the property.
DePree, 55, has been leading efforts to restore Grade II* listed Hopwood Hall in Middleton since 2017, under an agreement with the local authority, which gave him an option to buy the building.
He has written a book about his efforts to restore the derelict hall, which he has nicknamed “Downton Shabby”, and which once hosted Lord Byron. It still contains an ornate fireplace that the poet gifted to the then owners.
In November last year, DePree said, Rochdale council “suddenly locked the gates to the hall without any warning whatsoever”, with the local authority saying the American had not upheld his part of the deal.
“It was a big shock and really devastating,” he said, “because so many of our volunteers from the community have been putting in five years rescuing the gardens that were completely in rack and ruin, and they turned them around into award-winning gardens.”
DePree said he had “no confidence” in the council to secure the future of the building, and wanted to be allowed to carry on with the restoration project he had been spearheading for the best part of a decade.
The actor said it was “really upsetting” to be told he had not made enough progress on the project, adding: “It’s been years and years of my life.”
“I sold my house to help enable everything moving forward, and I left everything behind,” he said. “At this point, it’s been over 10 years that I’ve been involved, and I moved to England in 2017.
“I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds of my own personal money to make this happen.
“I’m completely invested in it, and also I believe in the community,” he added. “I know how much hard work that we put in that at this point, this building has to be saved.”
DePree said he has spent almost 11 months “trying to work with Rochdale council to find a resolution”, but now felt he had been “left with no choice but to sue Rochdale council in the high court” in order “to force them to honour our agreement”.
DePree at Hopwood Hall in 2017. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
DePree’s lawyer, Nick Wells, said: “We have reviewed many years of documents and emails and eventually obtained some previously unseen evidence through freedom of information and subject access requests, many of which Rochdale borough council tried to block.”
Wells said “the evidence points to the council having changed its position since entering into the option agreement in 2017”.
“We are therefore asking the high court to intervene and hold Rochdale council to the decisions that they made in 2017,” he added, “rather than the decisions they have purported to have made in 2024.”
In a previous life, Michigan-born DePree was an actor, film-maker, and writer, who once won a deal with Warner Bros to produce and star in his own television show.
He grew up listening to stories of the family’s ancestral home in England, but believed them to be fairytales, until he began researching his family tree online, and discovered his Manchester roots.
“I’ve given up my life for this building,” he said. “I came over to visit it first in 2013, just to see it. My grandfather was also named Hopwood, so he told me stories about it.
“I felt that if I didn’t do something that it would fall into being lost forever,” he added. “So I gave up my life. I moved over from the US to the UK. I completely trusted the council at the time; I thought we were working in partnership together.”
Rochdale council said ‘a viable business case and funding strategy has not been forthcoming’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Rochdale council said it does not comment on continuing legal proceedings, but pointed to previous statements it had made about the hall.
A spokesperson said in November: “In 2017, the council entered into an options agreement with Hopwood DePree which gave him the option to buy the building for a nominal fee if he could produce a commercially viable business model to secure the long-term future of the hall, alongside a detailed planning permission.
“Although this agreement has been renewed a number of times since 2017, a viable business case and funding strategy has not been forthcoming, and so the council’s cabinet has made the decision to not renew the options agreement.”
“The council sees Hopwood Hall as a very important part of Middleton’s heritage,” the spokesperson said, adding that alongside other public bodies such as Historic England, it had invested almost £1.7m into the building over the past seven years.
The council said it had “commissioned independent financial consultants to assess the business model proposed by Hopwood Productions and they concluded that these proposals would be loss-making and unlikely to be able to secure future public or private funding”.
“As Hopwood Depree has not been able to produce a viable proposal, despite having had seven years to do so,” the council said that in order to protect public money invested in the building it had “a responsibility to explore alternative options”.
“The council remains committed to the long-term future of the hall,” the spokesperson added, “and is keen to see it restored, so it can be brought into a viable future use.”
