In a stucco Edwardian house in Bayswater, Mrs Collings, the widowed housekeeper, walks up the stairs to the various flats that now make up the building. She reminisces about the people who have lived there, and talks about the current residents: photographer David Hurn, painter James Burley, dance teacher Helen May, retired maid Miss Croft, and Tom and Lou, who work in wine cellars.

Tom describes how he's more of a family man than the other, more bohemian, residents, commenting that he's the only one to have a television.

Mrs Collings has to provide hot water and telephone services, and says that it's hard to please everyone. If someone wants a party, she has to be very strict about numbers, as even twenty to thirty people weigh a ton and a half, and the ceilings won't stand for that.

While Helen's pupil Anne gets changed behind a screen, the former dancer reminisces about doing a pre-film performance as The White Moth, flitting around the stage until she got too close to the flame, and about her studies with the great Pavlova. Anne emerges and performs a dance.

Mrs Collings pays regular visits to the nearby Portobello Road market, partly for social reasons, but also in order to snap up bargains. Her dog, named Dodger after the Oliver Twist character, is very fussy about sausages, but if you get the right ones, he'll do anything for you, even if you're a burglar.

On the second floor, painter James Burley is working on a canvas while his girlfriend cooks him a meal. He's lived in the house for five years, and finds it strangely romantic, the leafy environment giving it a sense of isolation and calm. He likes the road's exotic Continental flavour, and would hate living in a modern block of flats: he feels that decayed grandeur suits his temperament best.

Mrs Collings offers David Hurn a patterned cloth, but it's not suitable for blackouts. Rummaging through the basement, he finds a tin bath, which he takes upstairs and shoots a series of pictures on his balcony with a model. During this, he talks about his more serious ambitions: the shots he's proudest of were of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, four years earlier.

At the top of the house is Miss Croft, now retired, but who spent 23 years as a personal maid to an American lady. As a result, she got to see much of America, and when she returned to Britain she felt terribly homesick, though she can alleviate this with her filmstrip viewer and trips to the newsreel cinema in Oxford Street, which often shows travelogues of places she's visited.

While Mrs Collings tends to her tiny garden, Tom comes down to pay the rent and the two share a bottle of wine. She tells him about various disasters that have befallen previous tenants: falling out of windows, dying of heart attacks, suicides.

Anne dances on stage, followed by Helen, who recreates a dance that she performed in the 1920s, wearing the same costume. Anne then performs 'Victorian Memories'.

There is banging at the door, but Mrs Collings ignores it: after eleven pm she refuses to answer the door.

The house is demolished, but its former inhabitants still have their memories.