In 1958 post-war Britain, Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, receives a letter from Miss Kenton, a former colleague employed as the Housekeeper (domestic worker) some twenty years earlier, now separated from her husband. Their former employer Lord Darlington has died a broken man, his reputation destroyed after he was exposed as a Nazi sympathizer, and his stately country manor has been sold to a retired United States Congressman, Mr. Jack Lewis. Stevens is granted permission to borrow Lewis' Daimler Company#Lanchester acquisition and badging, and he sets off to the West Country to see Miss Kenton, in the hope that she will return as housekeeper.