Downton Abbey: The Thirties – Episode 1: A July Morning

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It is July 1930, three weeks since Robert and Cora retreated to the Dower House, and Mary wakes to a quieter Downton — and a solicitor's letter she is not quite ready to open. She and Tom work through troubled estate accounts, confronting dairy prices that are quietly devastating the tenantry, while word arrives that the neighbouring Broughton Park has sold to an unknown London buyer. At the Dower House, Robert invents reasons to visit his old home; Cora quietly dispatches £2,400 to rescue her brother Harold from an old scandal; and Anna, visibly pregnant and due in August, settles into the garden while Bates reads childcare books in terrified silence.

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