Downton Shabby: One American's Ultimate DIY Adventure Restoring His Family's English Castle by Hopwood DePree

HGTV meets Downton Abbey! A ready-for-TV story--with charm and humor in abundance--about a Los Angeles producer who moves to England to save his ancestral castle from ruin.Hollywood producer Hopwood DePree had been told as a boy that an ancestor--who he was named for--had left his family's English castle in the 1700s to come to America. One night after some wine and a visit to Ancestry dot com, Hopwood discovered a photograph of a magnificent English estate with a familiar name: Hopwood Hall, a 60-room, 600-year-old grand manor on 5,000 acres. And with that, Hopwood DePree's life took an almost fairytale turn.Hopwood Hall, in northwest England, was indeed his family's ancestral home. It had been occupied continuously by the Hopwood family for five centuries until the last remaining male heirs were killed in World War I. Since then, the Hall had fallen gradually into disrepair and was close to collapse. When Hopwood visited, he discovered trees growing in the chimneys, holes in the