Hopwood Hall

Hopwood Hall
Location of Hopwood Hall in Greater Manchester
Type	House
Location	Middleton
Coordinates	53°34′16″N 2°11′25″W / 53.5711°N 2.1903°W / 53.5711; -2.1903Coordinates: 53°34′16″N 2°11′25″W / 53.5711°N 2.1903°W / 53.5711; -2.1903
Built	c.1426
Architectural style(s)	Mostly 17th & 18th Century
Governing body	Privately owned
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name	Hopwood Hall
Designated	15 March 1957
Reference no.	1068466

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 the death of the last heir in the twentieth century.^[1]

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.

Architecture[]

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. Some of the current building dates back to the early 17th century, with some late-16th century elements.^[3] The 1830s ice house in the grounds is also listed.^[4][5]

After over 500 years, the Hopwoods were no longer living at the estate in 1923. The Hall was utilised by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC) during World War II. The corporation used it, in conjunction with , to run the firm during the war years.

After the war, in 1946, the Hall became a training ground for Catholic teachers under the De La Salle Brothers.^[6] 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.^[7] It has been retained for use by Hopwood Hall College as the Milnrow Building.^[8]

Occupants and owners[]

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.^[9][10]

Lord Byron[]

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).^[11]

Hopwood DePree[]

In September 2017, The Daily Telegraph released a feature article announcing that the American actor and entrepreneur Hopwood DePree, who claims (through his maternal grandfather) descent from American Revolutionary War-era civil servant John Hopwood^[12] and on that basis relationship to the family that owned Hopwood Hall,^[13] had accepted an offer from Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council to take over Hopwood Hall with plans to restore it. DePree had been living in Hollywood and subsequently has 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]

See also[]

• Grade II* listed buildings in Greater Manchester
• Listed buildings in Middleton, Greater Manchester

References[]