A centuries-old crumbling mansion in Middleton may soon be the setting of the least exciting courtroom drama since Judge Rinder gave up arbitration for dancing.
Hopwood Hall, the 600-year-old heritage wreck with ideas above its station, is now the subject of a legal battle between Rochdale Council and Hopwood DePree, a Hollywood type who crossed the Atlantic to embrace damp cellars, falling masonry, and municipal indifference.
DePree, who claims to be a descendant of the original Hopwood clan, because nothing says noble lineage like a one-man film crew from Michigan, had spent years restoring the hall after discovering it on Google and deciding it was somehow less depressing than Detroit. After obtaining British citizenship (which now requires either a multi-choice test or decades of fruitless council email exchanges), DePree embarked on a project to bring the hall back to life using volunteers, scaffolding, and blind optimism.
“It was nearly falling down when I got here,” DePree said, in a statement to the BBC that presumably wasn’t accompanied by a laugh track. “I moved countries, sold my home, trusted the council. Honestly, I’m just shocked they’ve decided to behave like a council.”
The heartwarming tale of one man’s romantic mission to save a gothic ruin with no roof and even less heating came crashing down last November when Rochdale Council decided it had better things to do than watch a foreigner with a spanner and a dream try to turn a money pit into Downton Abbey. They pulled the plug on their exclusivity agreement, citing the absence of a “commercially viable” plan. Presumably, their idea of a viable business model includes turning it into a Premier Inn.
Mr DePree, feeling somewhat betrayed after what we assume were several long and unproductive Zoom meetings with someone from ‘Assets and Infrastructure’, has now launched a High Court bid to force the council to sell him the property. Legal experts believe the case hinges on whether “pouring your heart and soul into something” constitutes binding contract law, or just the plot of another failed Channel 4 documentary.
Hopwood Hall, which dates back to the 1420s and has been everything from a noble residence to a Catholic teaching college, has mostly been a public liability since 1990. It sat empty for decades, occasionally attracting historians, trespassers, and the odd bat colony, until DePree arrived like some tweed-clad Indiana Jones with a bucket of lime mortar.
Despite years of volunteer efforts and partial funding from Historic England (Britain’s leading supplier of false hope to anyone restoring buildings made of wattle and daub), the hall remains somewhere between ‘derelict’ and ‘haunted’.
Rochdale Council declined to comment on the legal case, presumably because they’re too busy drafting their next exciting plan for a car park or bin shelter on the site.
Locals are divided. Some believe DePree should be applauded for trying to rescue a local treasure. Others just want the potholes fixed and couldn’t care less if the hall collapses into a portal to 15th-century feudalism.
Either way, one thing is certain: the only thing older and more decayed than Hopwood Hall may be the council’s willingness to hand it over to someone with enthusiasm and no pension fund.
