Hopwood Hall

Hopwood Hall is a Grade II* historic house in Middleton, Greater Manchester, England, which was the ancestral country home of the landed gentry family of Hopwood who held it from the 12th century, passing to the Gregge (later Gregge-Hopwood, then Hopwood) family and remaining in their possession until was closed up in 1922 and the heirs moved out.[1] The Hall was sold in 1946, and after a series of temporary residents, by the 1980s it had fallen into disrepair; beginning in 2018 it was under renovation by the new owner, an American actor who is a distant relative of the Hopwoods.

For the historic building in the United States, see Hopwood Hall (Lynchburg, Virginia).

Hopwood Hall
Location of Hopwood Hall in Greater Manchester
TypeHouse
LocationMiddleton
Coordinates53.5711°N 2.1903°W / 53.5711; -2.1903
Builtc.1426
Architectural style(s)Mostly 17th & 18th century
Governing bodyPrivately owned
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official nameHopwood Hall
Designated15 March 1957
Reference no.1068466

Hopwood Hall was founded as a moated site. Later, the property had pleasure grounds and an extensive park with scattered woods. Features in the grounds included a kitchen garden, ice house, ha-ha, Italian garden, fountain, corn mill and small cross-shaped bower or grotto.[2]

Hopwood Hall also gives its name to an electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, and to Hopwood Hall College, a further education college with a campus within the original estate grounds.

History and architecture

The property is conjectured by historians to have first been built upon in the 12th century, possibly by Normans in the period after the Norman Conquest. It is thought there may be archaeological remains of former structures underneath the current hall.[3] It is so named from the Old English hop (valley among hills) + wudu (wood).

Hopwood Hall is a Grade II*-listed two-storey brick-and-stone manor house, built in a quadrangle around a timber-framed hall that has been dated to 1426. It is approximately 50,000 square feet under roof, and the estate grounds were originally over 5,000 acres before being parceled out in later years.[4][3] Some of the current building dates back to the early 17th century, with some late-16th century elements.[5] The 1830s ice house on the grounds is also listed.[6][7] Hopwood Hall has been recognized for its collection of unusual intricate, Jacobean era stonework and wood carvings around fireplaces and doors.[8] A old carving of a lion looks more like a monkey, it is believed the artist had never seen a lion before and was working from written description.[3] A carving on the fireplace in "The Lord Byron bedroom" is thought to be a likeness of the 14th-century Edward II of England.[4]

By 1750, the number of staff at Hopwood Hall was greater than the entire population of Middleton, the village in which it is located.[8] This included butlers, maids, cooks, cleaners, attendants, carriage drivers, farmers, beekeepers, blacksmiths, butchers, weavers, wood cutters, carpenters, stablehands, horsemen and ice keepers. It had its own own farm, mill, brewery, buttery, cheesery, icehouse and orangery for fresh fruit.[8]

The Hopwoods left in May 1922. The two male heirs, Edward and Robert Hopwood, were killed during World War I.[9] Of the estimated 30 people, staff and family, who left the hall to serve in the war, only four returned.[8] The grieving elderly parents closed up the property and moved to London.[4] It was put up for sale but there were no buyers.[10] The hall was sold to the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC) during World War II who used it, in conjunction with Blackfriars House, to run the firm during the war years.[9] They manufactured military uniforms and used the hall because it was a less conspicuous target for German bombers than a factory in Manchester.[3]

After the war, in 1946, the hall was sold to a trust and became part of De La Salle College, a Roman Catholic Teacher Training College.[10] On part of the estate grounds, the Brothers built a concrete chapel (1964–65) designed by Frederick Gibberd (the architect of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral), now deconsecrated but a listed building.[11] It has been retained for use by Hopwood Hall College as the Milnrow Building.[12]

In 1957, the hall was declared a building of historic interest.[9] For a period, the monks made the basement into a bar and music venue for area college students, to raise revenue for upkeep of the hall; graffiti that reads "Get down and boogie" is still visible on a wall in the basement.[8] Bands that played there included Black Sabbath, UB40 and Madness.[3] John Lennon reportedly came there one time from Manchester to help a friends band.[3] In 1989, the Catholic college closed and Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (RBMC) bought the estate in the 1990s.[9] A community college Hopwood Hall College was built on the grounds in 1992, Queen Elizabeth came for the opening, but the hall itself was vacated and fenced off, with only a caretaker to watch over it.[9]

RBMC did not have the resources to renovate or maintain it properly.[4] In 1998, Historic England placed the hall on its Heritage at Risk Register.[9] When Hopwood DePree took over responsibility in 2017, the property was 5 to 10 years away from being largely unsalvageable - dry rotted wood was the norm, water seeped from the walls and roof, floors laid bare to earth, windows were missing, a tree grew from the chimney, buildings had been vandalized.[4]

Owners and occupants

Hopwood family

The family name Hopwood is a corruption of "Hopwode", which dates from when a knight was granted land between the then townships of Hopwood, Thornham, and Middleton. These estates – Hopwood, Birch, Stanleycliffe and Thornham – were owned thereafter by the family of "Hopwode de Hopwode". For a period of at least 500 years, the Hopwoods were interred at the Church of St Leonard, Middleton. The family is documented since before 1380, when Alain de Hopwood was mentioned. Edmund Hopwood was a magistrate and High Sheriff of Lancashire during the Commonwealth of England, and a member of the Presbyterian congregation at Bury.[13][1]

Hopwood DePree

In September 2017, the American actor and entrepreneur Hopwood DePree, signed a contract with the current owners Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) to assume responsibility for Hopwood Hall.[4] The RBMC verified his family connection through American Revolutionary War-era civil servant John Hopwood.[4] DePree became interested in the property after researching his family history online and coming to visit.[4] RMBC did not have the funds to restore and maintain the property, and based on his family connection, they offered DePree an opportunity to buy it under conditions that he properly restore and maintain it, at which point he would become the new owner.[4] "Obviously, the family connection was a selling point with the Council," DePree said. "I don’t think any of this would have happened without that connection."[4]

The restoration cost, ongoing as of 2022, would be about £10.7 million ($13 million) and annual maintenance £650,000 ($800,000) with funds raised by DePree, the Council and other sources.[4] DePree had been living in Hollywood and subsequently moved to England to pursue the restoration full time.[14][15] Emergency work to make the building structurally sound and waterproof started in May 2018.[16] As of June 2022, the restoration work is ongoing, and is documented by DePree in a book called Downton Shabby.[17]

Famous guests

The poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Lord Byron (1788–1824) stayed with the Gregge-Hopwood family at Hopwood Hall from the end of September 1811 for around 10 days. He had come up to try and sell parts of the Byron family estate in Rochdale, a complex deal that was not to be completed fully in his lifetime. The 23-year-old poet probably spent his days at the Hall revising the draft of his ground breaking poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. A first hand account of his stay and the impression he made on the Gregge-Hopwood family and their friends can be found in "Byron’s Week in Middleton", by Anne Falloon of Middleton Archaeological Society, published in The Byron Journal (2013).[18] In appreciation of the success of the poem, Byron gifted the Hopwood Family an extravagant fireplace dated 1658 which remains in the hall today.[19]

Guy Fawkes visited the Hall in search of funding whilst organizing his so-called Gunpowder Plot in 1605.[19]

See also

References
  1. Macdonald, Charles Stuart (1963). A History of Hopwood Hall, Including the Life of Cardinal Langley, Lord Chancellor (1360-1437). Waldegrave.
  2. "Hopwood Hall, Middleton, England". parksandgardens.org. Parks & Gardens UK.
  3. DuPree, Hopwood (2022). Downton Shabby: One American's Ultimate DIY Adventure Restoring His Family's English Castle. William Morrow. ISBN 0063080850.
  4. Kaufman, Joanne (18 June 2022). "'Downton Shabby': A Commoner Takes on an English Castle". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
  5. "Hopwood Hall – Middleton". British Listed Buildings.
  6. "Hopwood Hall Icehouse". British Listed Buildings.
  7. Historic England. "Hopwood Hall (Grade II*) (1068466)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
  8. Hjelmgaard, Kim (7 February 2019). "'Downton Shabby': How a Hollywood guy is saving his British ancestral home". USA Today. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
  9. Petras, George; Palmer, Chad. "Family & history challenged American to take on the ultimate fixer-upper". USA Today. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
  10. "Hopwood Hall". Friends of Hopwood Woods Nature Reserve. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
  11. "Former Chapel at Hopwood Hall College". British Listed Buildings.
  12. "Full details of Rochdale colleges' £100million investment". Rochdale News. Rochdale Online. 7 August 2008.
  13. Farrer, William; Brownbill, J., eds. (1911). 'Townships: Hopwood.' A History of the County of Lancaster. Vol. 5. London: Victoria County History. pp. 170–173.
  14. Mendick, Robert (September 2017). "From Hollywood to Hopwood: Star tries to restore his ancestral pile". The Telegraph. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  15. Beard, Stephen (2 May 2018). "U.S. actor has a leading role in English house restoration". www.marketplace.org. Marketplace. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  16. Johnson, Helen (15 May 2018). "Emergency work begins to save the historic Hopwood Hall". Manchester Evening News.
  17. "Hopwood DePree: From Hollywood to restoring Downton Shabby". BBC News. 11 June 2022.
  18. Falloon, Anne (2013). "Byron's Week in Middleton". The Byron Journal. 41: 15–26. doi:10.3828/bj.2013.4.
  19. "History: The Story of Hopwood Hall Estate". Hopwood Hall Estate. Retrieved 22 June 2022.
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