"To the Manor Born" is set in the fictional village of Grantleigh, in Somerset near the fictional town of Marlbury. The series begins with the funeral of Marton (sic) fforbes-Hamilton, the Lord of the Manor of Grantleigh. Audrey, his widow (and apparently also his cousin), is far from distraught, as she now has control of the Grantleigh estate, which her family the fforbes-Hamiltons have controlled for 400 years. Her joy is short-lived though, as her solicitor Arnold Plunkett informs her that Marton was bankrupt and that the manor will have to be sold to pay off the debts. Audrey tries to buy back the manor at auction, but is outbid. The new Lord of the Manor is Richard DeVere, a recently widowed self-made millionaire who started his career on an East End fruit barrow and founded the "Cavendish Foods" supermarket chain, who to Audrey is simply a "grocer". DeVere brings his domineering mother, who is soon nicknamed by Audrey 'Mrs Poo', her full name being Maria Jaroslava Vladimira Martinka Polouvicka. She reveals to Audrey, who does not like foreigners, that she and her son came to Britain in 1939 from Czechoslovakia, and that Richard, whose real name is Bedřich Polouvicek, is half-Polish (on his late father Lazlo's side) and half-Czechoslovak. Mrs Polouvicka tries hard to fit into British country life, but her accent often leads to many mispronunciations and she frequently comes out with sayings from her "old Czechoslovakia" (even though Czechoslovakia is not so old for her; she was 15 years old when the country was created in 1919). From early on in the series, she encourages her son to propose to Audrey.