TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
'Downton Shabby': US producer quits Hollywood to do up UK family pile
Hollywood producer Hopwood DePree tracked down a red-brick 15th century pile with 60 rooms in the countryside in northwest England after hearing stories about it since he was a child.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
US film producer Hopwood DePree inspects the interior of Hopwood Hall, his family's ancestral home which dates from the 15th century, which he is in the process of restoring, in Middleton, northern England on November 28, 2022. (AFP/Oli Scarff)
A
s a child, Hopwood DePree heard stories about the family owning an ancestral country home in England but always thought it was the stuff of legends.
That was until the Hollywood producer tracked down a red-brick 15th century pile with 60 rooms in the countryside in northwest England.
In 2017 the American quit California to live full-time near Manchester and restore the building, which had fallen into a state of disrepair, to its former glory.
The unlikely chain of events began one evening in 2013 when DePree was looking on a genealogy website and found an old photo of the property.
"My gosh. It's the place my grandfather was talking about," he recalls thinking.
The property was Hopwood Hall, explaining DePree's unusual first name passed down the generations, which he had always felt embarrassed about.
Soon afterwards DePree got on a plane on a mission to find Hopwood Hall, "just out of curiosity".
More from The Weekender
Jakarta’s padel moment
From FOMO to full-blown obsession, padel has captured the city. What comes next may depend less on courts and more on the communities that grow around them.
The battle over memory
And why the government’s plan to rewrite its history books should alarm us all.
Are younger workers getting something right about work?
As micro-retirements gain traction, Gen Z and young millennials are challenging traditional ideas of ambition, success and when it’s okay to pause.
