When Hollywood actor-director Hopwood DePree was growing up in the US state of Michigan, his exotic name was the source of a good deal of grief.
“Kids would beat me up when they found out my real name,” he says. “They said I should have been named Bob. Or Steve.”
Things got so bad that he decided to call himself Tod instead.
But in later life he learned to embrace his “weird” name after discovering that he had been given it as part of a family tradition aimed at keeping alive their links to a distinguished line of English gentry that had lived in a 60-room stately home near Manchester for centuries.
Last September he took the extraordinary decision to sell his home in Los Angeles (which enjoys 12 hours of sun a day in April) and move to Lancashire (21 days of rain) spurred on by a dream of restoring the crumbling ruin to its former glory.
“My grandfather used to talk about Hopwood Hall when I was a boy but I always thought he was telling a fairy tale,” he says.
“Years later I was living in LA and one night while looking online at an ancestry website I was amazed to realise Hopwood Hall was real and still standing.
“I sent an email and the next day I had responses saying the hall was in need of help and wondering if I would be coming to England any time soon.”
The director of TV film Gordo’s Road Show – and once named among “20 People To Know” by The Hollywood Reporter – duly booked a flight to Manchester to scope out the house for himself.
It must have made for a depressing sight. Burglars had stolen the lead from the roof with the result that rainwater had been leaking in for years.
Thieves had also made off with parquet flooring and York stone paving. Walls were covered in graffiti and much of the woodwork had dry rot. DePree was not discouraged, however.
“The first time I walked into Hopwood Hall I was blown away by how old it was – dating to at least 1426 and perhaps earlier. I was taken into a room with intricate wood carvings in the oldest part of the hall and learnt that this is where my 14th great-grandfather was born. I was completely moved.”
In its heyday the Grade II-listed manor house employed 28 gardeners to maintain its parkland, gardens, ice house and grotto and hosted guests of the stature of Lord Byron. When the invitations went out for George V’s coronation in 1911, Colonel ERG Hopwood of the Lancashire Hussars was on the list.
But after the two last remaining heirs to Hopwood Hall were killed in the First World War, it gradually fell into disrepair.
Meanwhile, DePree’s branch of the family had settled in the US in the 1700s and, at the time the American War of Independence broke out in 1775, Moses Hopwood was running a plantation 20 miles from one owned by George Washington.
When the first US president needed an aide-de-camp, he settled on Moses’ son John, who went on to serve Washington throughout the eight-year conflict.
The Hopwood surname was lost in the late 19th century when Alcinda Hopwood married one Newton Black but, as we have seen, male heirs were christened Hopwood to remind them of their roots.
Fast forward a century or so and our hero is determined to revive the ancient family seat. “I was told that experts estimated the hall would be lost within five to 10 years unless something was done to save it,” says DePree, 47.
“I immediately felt a strong obligation – thinking if I am the only Hopwood currently on earth in a position to save it, then I must.”
After signing a deal with the current owner, Rochdale Council, that gives him three years to put in place a financial plan for its renovation and transformation into a centre for the arts, he moved to the UK on a three-year visa.
There were some teething problems, notably when he was laughed out of a local chippie for trying to pay for a pie with his American Express card, but he insists the area is “one of those places where I instantly feel at home”.
He moved into a rented house near the home and hopes to be living there soon. “I am refurbishing a small flat in the hall that will be a temporary living accommodation. Living there will provide an extra layer of security as well as create new life and energy at the hall.”
His priorities are to stabilise the building and make it weather-proof. He has roped in various local colleges to help.
Students at Manchester School of Architecture are working on renovation proposals. Horticulturalists at Hopwood College are helping with the garden and he is in talks with the college’s bricklaying course to use its apprentices to help rebuild the boundary walls.
He has received £276,000 from Historic England and Rochdale Borough Council for emergency works and he plans to raise the £6-£10million he will need to complete the project through a combination of grants, donations and private equity funding.
“Moving to England has been a huge life change but I love it,” he says.
“I’m open to experiencing British life. I’m now a tea drinker, I like fish and chips and I bought a waxed coat, wellies and a cap.” And of course an umbrella.
