Downton Shabby takes a downward turn
Plus: The Carlton Club gets a two month extension on its eviction notice
Dear readers — welcome to today’s briefing. This week we’re covering the latest in the unusual story of Hopwood DePree — an American producer and actor who left the lights of Los Angeles for the red-bricks of Rochdale to renovate a building which he claims is his ancestral home. DePree has been renovating Hopwood Hall, a 600-year-old estate in Middleton, for the last seven years. The estate’s owner, Rochdale Council, are claiming that DePree hasn’t worked up a practical plan for the building’s future, and are backing out of their agreement to sell it to the actor — but DePree says that a viable plan was never the basis of their agreement to begin with. That’s below.
Create magical festive memories at RHS Garden Bridgewater
If you find it a struggle every year to get into the Christmas spirit, we have the event for you. Glow is running at RHS Garden Bridgewater, from the 27th November all the way to the 30th December, with a series of awe-inspiring displays. There’s a brand-new illuminated trail that will enchant visitors of all ages with spectacular light shows every evening. Stroll through twinkling yew domes resembling hedgehogs, follow swirling snowflake lights and watch a thrilling light juggling show. Then kindle your inner glow with a glass of mulled wine and some roast marshmallows.
Tickets are now available starting at just £12.95 for adults and £6.95 for children — click here for tickets and more details.
☁️ This week’s weather
A mostly cloudy week, according to our local weatherman Martin Miles, who says we can expect a week that begins with mild temperatures and a little rain, and ends with some occasional spells of sunshine.
Tuesday ☁️ Cloudy and calm, with patchy drizzle under the thickest cloud. 13°C.
Wednesday ☁️ Misty and dull with drizzle during the morning, then a little brighter in the afternoon as the cloud cover thins out. 14°C.
Thursday 🌥️ Largely cloudy and dry with a few bright spells during the afternoon. 14°C.
Friday 🌥️ Mostly cloudy and dry with light winds. 14°C.
Outlook 🌥️ Predominantly cloudy and mild over the weekend but with patchy light rain and drizzle at times.
You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.
Big Story: Downton Shabby takes a downward turn
Top line: Rochdale Council has pulled out of a deal to sell Hopwood Hall — a grand manor in Middleton built nearly 600 years ago — to American actor Hopwood DePree. DePree says the building has been in his family some 400 years, and he’s been renovating it since 2017. But now, the council says his plans for the building aren’t viable.
Context: DePree came to Rochdale from Los Angeles after discovering his familial link to the hall in 2013. He found a 50,000 square foot manor gone derelict. As a New York Times journalist put it: “The roof leaked prodigiously, dry rot was ascendant, moisture seeped from the walls, plaster was falling from the ceilings, windows were missing panes, floors were missing boards, many sections of the house had been vandalised. Trees were growing out of the chimneys.”
He eventually sold his house in LA and moved to Rochdale, raising around £1.7 million from Rochdale Council and heritage bodies to fund the project.
He wrote a book about the renovation, called Downton Shabby, published in 2022.
Details: That airbrushed narrative — plucky American crosses the pond, stumbles into ancestral home, gets the money and gets to work — belies the agreement that DePree had with Rochdale Council, the hall’s owner. The council gave DePree five years to come up with a viable business plan for the hall, with the option to buy it. It has extended the agreement multiple times since, but at a meeting last week it decided to back out, taking the sale option with it.
Dispute: This decision is now at the centre of a dispute between DePree and the council. In a statement, DePree’s lawyer says that the only condition required for him to buy the hall was for the council to give his scheme planning permission, which it did in 2022, and for him to serve an option notice to buy. He did that last week.
“The right to exercise the option to purchase is Hopwood’s sole right and does not need the Council’s approval or agreement,” the lawyer said in their statement.
Blindsided: DePree told the BBC the council had “pulled the rug from under him” in withdrawing from the agreement. In an update on social media, he said he only found out about the decision when approached by journalists for comment.
Rochdale Council says the sale of the hall to DePree was predicated on him developing a workable plan. It says he has “not been able to produce a viable proposal, despite having had seven years to do so”, and that consultants it brought in said the plans would not attract further funding. Therefore, given the amount of public money already given to the project, it needs to look for alternatives.
A big question is what DePree wants to use the building for after acquiring it. He has made multiple statements about opening the hall to the public, but it's unclear whether he served the option notice to the council last week as an individual. If so, he would effectively be taking a public asset, renovated with public money, into private ownership. We asked his lawyer about the nature of the proposed purchase and indeed, we understand DePree set up a holding company — of which he is sole director — to buy the hall.
Bottom line: DePree’s lawyer maintains he should be sold the hall under his agreement with the council. One person watching on with interest will be Ed Bagley, a janitor from Ohio who, like DePree, claims to be rightful heir to another one of Greater Manchester’s historic buildings: Baguley Hall. He is currently in talks with Historic England, the hall’s current owner, about his own plans for its future. Members can read more about that here.
We are working on a long read about DePree and his efforts to renovate Hopwood Hall — doomed or otherwise. If you have anything you would like to contribute, email Ophira.
Note: The original version of this story said we were awaiting comment from DePree’s lawyer regarding the nature of the proposed purpose. We heard back after publication and have amended accordingly.
Your Mill briefing
👮 Two busts of Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann have reportedly been stolen from the University of Manchester’s chemistry building. Weizmann served as a lecturer for the university in the early 1900s, and became the president of Israel in 1948, shortly after the country was established. The Palestine Action Group claimed credit for having “abducted” the busts in order to mark the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
🌻 Parents of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities at Werneth School in Stockport have claimed that their children have been “humiliated” by the school’s demand that they carry lanyards detailing their learning disabilities. The school has stated that SEND pupils must either wear or carry sunflower lanyards, or else face disciplinary action. One parent told the BBC that she found the policy “disgusting”, and claimed that her 12-year-old autistic son had been bullied in school as a result.
🎉 The Carlton Club has successfully won a two-month extension on its eviction notice. The community centre in Whalley Range has extended their lease until January 10, giving them more time to come to a long-term solution for the future of the club. Representatives of Carlton Club have suggested the use of an independent mediator between themselves and the building owners in order to reach an agreement.
Home of the week
This three bed on Eccles Old Road in Salford is on the market for £400,000 — cute cat and enviable spice collection presumably not included.
Our favourite reads
Urban planning and the long legacy of brutalism — The Guardian
A fascinating letter in The Guardian from Mike Harding, one of the labourers who worked on Hulme Crescents in the late-1960s, who recalls the painstaking operation to assemble pre-cast slabs in an elegant horseshoe curve, and the rats and cockroaches that moved in as they were working. “It was obvious that with no insulation the concrete would cause condensation once the first kettle went on the boil,” Harding writes, but he adds that when he pointed this out to the ganger, he replied: “Sure, I know that and you know that, and the site foreman knows that, and the town planner knows that, and the lord mayor knows that, and even the fucken’ lord mayor’s cat and budgie knows that, but it’s like a steamroller going’ downhill — there’s too much money and influence involved. It’ll be finished — and it’ll be knocked down in 30 years.”
The climate protesters who threw soup at a van Gogh painting. (And why they won’t stop.) — Politico
In October 2022, Anna Holland, a “quiet bookworm” who grew up in a small village in the North West, and Phoebe Plummer, an outspoken climate activist with a shock of pink hair who had recently dropped out of their maths and computer science degree at the University of Manchester, citing mental health issues, met at the National Gallery in London to throw soup over the Sunflowers painting by Van Gogh. Holland and Plummer were sentenced to 20 months and two years in prison respectively, a ruling that Judge Christopher Hehir said he hoped “would dissuade climate protesters from further lawlessness”. One hour after the sentencing, three other Just Stop Oil activists entered the National Gallery, armed with tins of soup, and tossed them over the sunflowers again. “And then they sat down together, cross legged, and waited to be arrested.”
Whalley: is this England’s seshiest village? — The Face
Whalley, a picturesque East Lancashire village filled with Tudor and Georgian buildings with a population of just over 4,000, seems an unlikely spot for a thriving nightlife scene, but according to writer Fergal Kinney, the quaint village has become “a hotly desired spot for weekend booze tourists” who have noticed the local nightclub stays open until 4am and the pints are considerably cheaper than in Manchester. Even better, rail staff often forget to check passengers’ train tickets, meaning some people don’t buy them on their way to a night out in Whalley, “saving a hearty £2.50 towards beer money”. Walking down the strip on a Friday night, Kinney encounters “innumerable drunken chats booming from packed pubs and restaurants, while buses and taxis ferry excitable punters to the square”. “Whatever you think a village sounds like, it isn’t this.”
Our to do list
Tuesday
📚 Eliza Clark, author of the brilliant true crime journalism satire Penance, is sitting down with culture critic Jess White at Waterstone’s on Deansgate about her new short story collection She’s Always Hungry. £5.
🎭 HOME is showing Follow the Signs, a show about being “deaf in a hearing world… black on a racist island”. The story is told through a mix of British Sign Language, spoken English, movement, rap and English captions, “to be shared and celebrated by deaf and hearing audiences together”. Tickets here.
Wednesday
🍝 The Spärrows, a modern European restaurant tucked away in a tiny railway arch in the Green Quarter, is the best place to try authentic Spätzle pasta and dumplings inspired by the food traditions of Russia and Poland. They’re usually fully booked, but have some availability this weekend.
👑 The King’s Arms in Salford is showing an experimental production of Macbeth, reimagining the paranoid king as a high-flying financier overlooked for a life-changing promotion. £12.
Thursday
🏳️🌈 The Linden Archives is a new photobook exploring the queer scene in Manchester, London, Brighton and Newcastle in the 1990s, aiming to “encapsulate a people defiant in the face of the AIDS crises and discriminatory laws”. The book launch is at the Whitworth from 6.30pm and it costs just £5 to attend.
🎨 There’s a new exhibition at the Elizabeth Gaskell House honouring the team of volunteers who brought the beautiful Grade II listed neoclassical villa back into use. Book here.
Thanks to our sponsor, RHS Glow.