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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Hannah Al-Othman North of England correspondent

US actor battles UK council over restoration of ‘Downton Shabby’, his ancestral home

Rochdale Council Rochdale United States
Hopwood DePree standing in a dilapidated room at Hopwood Hall
Hopwood DePree at the house in 2017. He says he is ‘completely invested in it’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

It was a story fit for the pages of a Hollywood screenplay, with a California actor moving to a town in north Manchester to restore his dilapidated ancestral home.

But Hopwood DePree’s romance plot has transformed instead to a horror, after he found himself locked out of the building he was restoring, and now battling the local council in court for possession of the property.

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