Hollywood actor aims to script happy ending for historic home
IT’S a story that could have come straight from the pages of a screenplay.
The American producer and actor who uproots his entire life to move from the Hollywood Hills to North Manchester, to save his historic ancestral home from crumbling into the ground. But the story is real, and is one that Hopwood DePree, whose English ancestors founded the Grade II listed Hopwood Hall in the 12th century, hopes will eventually have its own film-worthy ending.
The grand building, set in woodland between Middleton, Heywood and Rochdale, was the seat of the Hopwood family for generations, before being used for education for most of the 20th century and eventually falling empty in the 1980s.
It once played host to Lord Byron, who was said to have taken inspiration from the surrounding woods when writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
Now derelict and on English Heritage’s ‘at risk’ list, Hopwood is leading the charge to save the once grand hall and restore it to its former glory.
“Growing up in the States with the name Hopwood, it’s not the easiest name to grow up with, but my grandfather was also named Hopwood and he had a tremendous sense of pride about that name.
For years, I never appreciated it or understood it”, says Hopwood.
“As I grew up, I started to appreciate it. He told me there was a family home in England but I didn’t think it was still standing.”
A few years ago he began researching the home and came across contact details for Bob Wall - a Middletonian who for many years has been doing everything in his power to protect the hall.
A few emails later, he was boarding a plane to come see the hall for himself.
It was during this first visit that Hopwood was shown into the hall’s ‘birthing room’ and told this was the place his 14th great-grandfather was born hundreds of years ago.
The revelation had such a profound effect on him that earlier this month, Hopwood left his home, 5,000 miles away in Hollywood and relocated to Middleton so he can have a hands-on role in saving the house.
He added: “I just loved it. There are few places you can go in life and just feel comfortable. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
Now this unlikely pairing - the softly spoken American on a mission to preserve his family history and the Manc with a talent for restoration - are bonded by a shared passion for the hall.
Bob found this place by chance while on a bike ride fourteen years ago. Two years later he became its custodian, a labour of love he somehow manages to carry out alongside his day job restoring other properties. He has even painstakingly saved every tiny piece of plaster that falls from the walls as the building deteriorates, in the hope that they can be used in the restoration.
His immense skills at renovation are only rivalled by his mastery of the British sense of humour - in which Hopwood is currently getting a crash course.
“Put your hand on that” Bob says to me, gesturing towards an intricate wall carving as we take a tour inside the hall.
“Someone carved that 400 years ago’ he says proudly, before turning to Hopwood with a smile ‘How old is America again, Hopwood?’
To say the hall is looking its age would be an understatement so great it borders on facetious.
But it’s only by looking inside that it becomes obvious why leaving this building to rot into obscurity would be a catastrophic blow to local heritage.
Anyone who can look beyond the extensive dry rot, the leaks, the vast holes and all the other ravages of time this building has suffered, cannot fail to be left in awe by the hundreds of years of history still in evidence here.
Extended and re-purposed numerous times over the centuries, there are still original features from the 1420s right through to the late 20th century and everything in between.
This is the place where perfectly intact Jacobean carvings and centuries old stone fireplaces sit alongside the remnants of a disco, last used in the 1980s.
Apart from Bob, and the occasional vandal who managed to breach the imposing spiked security fence, no one had been inside for 30 years.
But all that will change when the public is given a rare glimpse into some of the hall’s rooms, on Heritage Open Day, on Saturday September 9.
Hopwood said: “The reason we are excited about Heritage Open Day is the thought of bringing the community in, getting