LONDON — A former US filmmaker has launched a Excessive Courtroom battle in opposition to an English council to realize management of the ancestral stately dwelling he spent seven years making an attempt to avoid wasting from destroy.
Hopwood DePree has led an operation to safeguard historic Hopwood Corridor in Middleton, Higher Manchester, since 2017, and says he complied with an settlement with Rochdale Borough Council that gave him the choice to purchase the constructing.
Nevertheless, the council say he didn’t fulfil the circumstances of the deal, and locked him out in November 2024.
DePree, who revealed a e-book referred to as Downton Shabby in 2022 about his work to revive the corridor, has now taken motion in an try and be declared its authorized proprietor.
DePree says his grandfather advised him tales of “Hopwood Fort” as a baby in Michigan, however that he solely found the actual corridor existed whereas researching his household historical past in 2013.
Elements of the 60-room constructing date from the 1420s, however each direct heirs had been killed in World Warfare One and the final relations moved out within the Nineteen Twenties.
It was derelict by the point DePree visited, and he says he was advised in 2015 that it could be past restore in one other 5 to 10 years.
He moved to the UK to spearhead the hassle to reserve it, signing a cope with the council in 2017 saying he may purchase the corridor for £1 on the situation he gained planning permission to develop it.
DePree started work on the crumbling constructing and obtained planning permission in 2022 to refurbish it as an occasion and hospitality venue. He says he has spent £750,000 of his personal cash on the challenge.
However he says relations soured when the council’s Rochdale Improvement Company turned extra concerned in 2024, and DePree’s authorized case accuses the company of making an attempt to “poison every part my workforce and I had labored so onerous to realize”.
He claims the council stopped co-operating and went behind his again, and that their conduct has been “evasive, deceptive and at occasions stunning”.
A council spokesperson mentioned: “We do not touch upon ongoing authorized discussions and do not intend to elaborate on earlier statements we’ve got made on this topic.”
The council has beforehand mentioned any sale would depend upon DePree having “a commercially viable enterprise mannequin to safe the long run way forward for the corridor”.
Final November, the council mentioned it had determined to not renew the choice settlement after consultants mentioned his plans had been “unlikely to have the ability to safe future public or non-public funding”.
At the moment, a council spokesman mentioned DePree “had not been capable of produce a viable proposal, regardless of having had seven years to take action”, which it mentioned was a situation of the sale. The authority mentioned it “had a accountability to discover different choices” with a purpose to “defend the general public monies invested so far”.
In November, council chief Neil Emmott mentioned: “Mr DePree was requested to fulfill a variety of circumstances after we entered into our settlement with him. We’d be failing in our responsibility to guard our historic belongings if we did not maintain Mr DePree to the phrases of this settlement.”
The council mentioned it spent £557,000 between 2017 and 2024 for important repairs, with virtually £1m contributed by Historic England. The council mentioned it was now spending an additional £700,000 on roof repairs and a feasibility research.
In line with DePree’s authorized paperwork, the council has additionally argued that the planning permission was inadequate to fulfill the phrases for a sale beneath the settlement. He’s disputing that.
He’s additionally disputing whether or not he wanted to supply a “viable” enterprise mannequin to adjust to the circumstances for a sale, and his courtroom papers say he does have “a transparent imaginative and prescient, a plan and the assets to rescue Hopwood Corridor”.
DePree advised BBC Information he believes he has complied along with his finish of the settlement.
“Once I took the challenge on, the corridor was just some years from utterly falling down and changing into a destroy,” he mentioned.
“We labored so onerous and poured every part into it. I moved nations. I obtained British citizenship. I left behind a life and bought my dwelling. I went by way of a lot with the idea that the council was being open and sincere with me, and I trusted them.”
He added: “In the end I had an settlement that I signed with them that I fulfilled. My attorneys really feel that we fulfilled that, and the council went in opposition to that, and I felt that I had no different selection apart from to file courtroom proceedings in opposition to them.”
DePree and his household are concerned in property growth, and he bought his dwelling within the Hollywood Hills to assist fund the challenge.
In his former life, DePree was an actor, author, producer and director whose early makes an attempt to make it massive in Hollywood had been depicted in low-budget documentary Rhinoskin: The Making of a Film Star.
He wrote, directed and appeared within the well-received impartial rom-com The Final Huge Attraction, and produced the 2010 drama Virginia starring Jennifer Connelly and Ed Harris. — BBC
