How Hopwood DePree fumbled his Hollywood ending

If a 2018 anecdote in The Telegraph is to be believed, then Hollywood producer Hopwood DePree left LA one morning and flew to Manchester, where he presumably caught the Transpennine Express or otherwise maybe a taxi to Hopwood Hall. He alighted one of many grand staircases that adorn the manor house and found the word ‘HELP’ scrawled in blood across one of the walls. 

Was the crumbling hall crying out to DePree – by his own account its ancestral heir – to save it? Was the property telling DePree himself to seek help: to call on the council, Historic England, and other such heritage-focussed bodies, to fund the dilapidated building’s restoration? Or was it an omen, suggesting that Hopwood was going to need all the help he could get? You’d be forgiven for assuming the latter, because of the blood. DePree, evidently the optimist, appears to have gone with the former two.

DePree’s own Hollywood-perfect version of his story is that he’d heard fairy tales about his family’s ‘castle’ ever since he was a child. In 2013, while scrolling through an ancestry website, he discovered not only that the hall was real, but that it was indeed still standing, plonked round the back of a college in Middleton, near Rochdale. He also discovered that his ancestral home was all but derelict, and at once became determined to rescue it. By 2017 he’d left behind balmy LA for an altogether less glamorous life in north west England.

That same year he entered into a deal with Rochdale Council, who had confirmed his ancestral connection to Hopwood Hall. DePree and the council signed an option agreement, a legally binding contract giving DePree the right to purchase the Manor House within a set timeframe — in this case, five years. But last weekend, after seven years had passed, the council backed out of the contract, leaving both Hopwoods, man and hall alike, in the lurch.

Rochdale Council’s rendition of the story is not quite as suited for the silver screen. “I’ll start off by saying I actually like Hopwood DePree,” says Neil Emmott, Rochdale Council leader. “I think he’s very personable, he’s a very nice guy who’s clearly got passion to renovate the hall.” However, Emmott feels that the council’s deal with DePree – a deal that he reminds us was made “a bit before my time” – was more the result of the American’s charms than his abilities as a businessman or renovator. “He came over from the United States and, you know, he had lots of enthusiasm and stuff like that,” Emmott explains. “I think the council thought ‘Well, this is the guy that can carry things forward.’”

DePree did carry things forward. In the seven years since the contract with the council was signed, he may not have come up with a viable plan for the future of Hopwood Hall, but he galvanised a volunteer force and attracted major funding from the likes of Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage fund. One senior member of the council says having a figurehead with an authentic connection to the hall was key to getting the funding: “as an individual, with backing, he could get grants the council couldn’t get,” they say.

DePree’s efforts at the hall have also won him support from the local community. Darrell Vere, a disgruntled ‘Friend of Hopwood Hall’, tells The Mill that he was “absolutely disgusted with [Rochdale Council] and their underhand ways” after they pulled out of the deal. Vere explains that he’d volunteered his own time and money renovating the hall and manufacturing new leaded windows. “DePree is passionate about saving the hall and has spent countless hours and thousands of pounds of his own money in pursuit of the renovation,” Vere claims. “[Rochdale Council] sat on the ownership of the hall for 30 years and did nothing to help.”

The development is particularly surprising because, to read DePree’s interviews, you would think the building was already his. Indeed, outlets described him as having “inherited” it, and he’s told the press about his plans to host friends and live there. Evidently, the truth isn’t so clear-cut, and questions still abound. Why did the council take DePree — blond, charismatic, a media darling — under its wing only to jettison him and his supporters now? And who should benefit most from the renovation of the building? Ultimately, who has the truest claim to Hopwood Hall: the public, or its most devoted son?