The Times Magazine 51great-grandmother but when his grandfather,
Herbert Hopwood Black, would sit him on
his knee, “He told me stories of a vast area
of rolling land called Hopwood in England,
where our ancestors had built a magnificent
castle.” DePree – christened Hopwood by
his mother as a tribute to her father and his
family – was enchanted if sceptical.
Shortly after he turned 40, his grandfather
and father died within two years of one
another. The loss of the two most important
men in his life “left me reeling”, he recalls. His
LA friends were mostly married and having
families of their own, while he was still single
and childless. “I was questioning everything:
my career, my relationships, my life,” he says.
Where some might seek solace in drugs or
alcohol, DePree turned to genealogy. There
was, he says, something about tracing his
ancestors online at ancestry.com and
myheritage.com that gave him comfort.
One night he unearthed an article about
a Lord Hopwood of Hopwood Hall and, less
than a month later, was standing in front of
the 13ft-high security fence surrounding it.
The hall had, he says, with considerable
understatement, “seen better days”. Derelict
for three decades, its intricate lead windows
were all either smashed or boarded up, trees
were growing out of chimneys and vines
through walls. Ceilings and floors had
collapsed throughout. It was riddled with
dry rot. Large parts of the roof were missing,
allowing rain to pour in. Vandals broke in on
a regular basis (hence the fence). Its caretaker,
Bob, appointed by the council, predicted that
in five to ten years, the hall would be in ruins.
Today, by stark contrast, Hopwood Hall is a
hive of activity. Teams of builders in hard hats
and hi-viz jackets lug hefty machinery in and
out of entrances marked “Dangerous”, while
gangs of volunteers tend to neat lawns and
bountiful flowerbeds. Skips full of red bricks
fill the courtyards – the estate once had its
own clay pit from which the bricks for the
Tudor section of the house were made – while
the small family chapel is now a workshop
where locals are learning to make lead windows.
I find DePree in one of the courtyards,
finishing an interview with an American film
crew. An improbably youthful 52, he is tall,
slim and entirely black-clad, with bleached
blond hair and dazzling teeth to match. He
cuts an incongruous figure, infinitely more
Sunset Strip than suburban Lancashire.
And yet it is immediately apparent how
warmly the community has taken this spray-
tanned blow-in to their bosom. I am met on
the drive by Zena, a dervish in bright leggings
and the driving force behind publicising
DePree’s efforts with the hall, and Geri, who
worked at the golf club next door until she
defected to become DePree’s assistant, and
Geoff, an amateur local historian (and oncethe town’s undertaker), who whips out his
laptop to show me photographs of the hall’s
extraordinary Oak Room, covered wall-to-wall
in 15th-century wooden carvings, as well as
videos of DePree’s first visit, nine years ago.
What DePree lacks in practical skills, they
agree, he makes up for in enthusiasm and
optimism. “You can see his passion. He really
motivates people,” says Geoff fondly. “He’d
make a great prime minister.”
I disagree – he seems entirely decent and
honest. He is also – unlike the vast majority
of actors I’ve encountered – endearingly
self-deprecating, appearing not to take himself
at all seriously.
“I was very much a fish out of water. Still am,
I think,” says DePree of his drastic relocation.
“I’m still like, ‘Can I get this without the bread,
please?’ ” He has struggled with both the
concept and reality of black pudding, tried to
pay with his American Express in the local
chippy (“I learnt that lesson quickly after they
laughed me out of there”) and, one sleepless
night, trudged to the 24-hour petrol station
hoping to buy sleeping tablets. “The cashier
looked as if I’d asked him to sell me heroin.”
But, DePree soon deduced, the answer to
every British problem is a brew. He recalls
Bob the caretaker greeting him on one of his
earliest visits. “He said, ‘The ceiling in the long
corridor just collapsed, water is pouring into
a leak in the Georgian room and a window in
the chapel was just smashed by a rock thrown
by a vandal. Can I get you a cup of tea?’ ”
Geoff, 77, has spent the past 40 years
researching local history and eagerly gives mea potted bio of the hall, whose earliest sections
date back to 1426, when a timber-framed
hall was erected, surrounded by a moat. The
grandest sections were added in the early
17th century using bricks fired from the estate’s
clay pit, at a time when it also boasted its own
coalmine, corn mill and game shooting. By the
late 1800s, the hall was the town’s largest
employer – and entirely self-sufficient, with
farms, kitchen gardens and a dairy – but the
last Hopwoods left in the early Twenties after
the two male heirs, Edward and Robert, were
both killed in the First World War, abruptly
ending the Hopwood family line.
The hall served as a cotton factory during
the Second World War, then a Catholic
teacher-training college until the Eighties
(one wing still contains a long black-painted
bar and discotheque from that iteration,
featuring CND signs daubed on the walls
and slogans including “Get down and boogie”).
By the time DePree arrived, it had been
vacant for almost 30 years.
Thanks to the pandemic, restoration work
is two years behind schedule. “And we’ve got
supply chain issues, like everyone else,” says
DePree. “Prices have gone up 30-35 per cent
and there are shortages of labour and crew.”
How much of his own money has he spent so
far? “I would have to ask my accountant,” he
says, wincing. “But I haven’t dared.”
Funds, grants and support from institutions
including the National Lottery and Historic
England have been invaluable, he says, but
even more crucial has been the kindness of
fellow stately homeowners, a subculture of
aristocrats and heirs with the keys to the
nation’s castles who have taken DePree under
their well-bred wings.
The Earl and Countess of Derby (“Teddy
and Cazzy”), the incumbents of Knowsley
Hall in Merseyside, have become close friends,
not only hosting him for weekend shooting
parties but also imparting endless advice on
his ambitious restoration. “It is importantHe tried to use his Amex
in the local chippy. ‘I was
very much a fish out of
water. Still am, I think’
The Earl and Countess of DerbyThe Earl and Countess of Carnarvon at Highclere, aka DowntonGUZELIAN, ALAMY