When a retired Headmaster, Peter Hale, and his wife, Diana, from Caxley, buy the row of four idyllic-looking, but delapidated attached cottages known as Tyler’s Row, in the village of Fairace, they have their hands full with one of the sitting tenants, Mrs Fowler, who inhabits one of the end cottages. She not only resents the Hales for their “intrusion”, but she has an on-going feud with the other sitting tenant, ex-Sargeant Burnaby who inhabit the other end cottage. The Hales’ plans to renovate the middle two cottages into one home do not go as smoothly as they had hoped.