Rochdale (United Kingdom) (AFP) – As 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.