10 Downing Street: Where Prime Ministers rise and fall

Many United Kingdom Prime Ministers, politicians and governments have risen and fallen, but as it looks, 10 Downing Street is apparently ‘eternal’

10 Downing Street, the locale of British prime ministers since 1735, competes with the White House as the most important political building anywhere in the world in the modern era.

Behind its black door have been taken the most important decisions affecting Britain for the last 275 years.

According to the government website, in the 20th century alone, the First and Second World Wars were directed from within it, as were the key decisions about the end of the empire, the building of the British nuclear bomb, the handling of economic crises from the Great Depression in 1929 to the Great Recession, and the building up of the welfare state.

Sir Anthony Seldon, in his introduction, argues that some of the most famous political figures of modern history have lived and worked in Number 10, including Robert Walpole, Pitt the Younger, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

The latest Prime Ministers to occupy the place include Gordon Brown, Lord Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Elizabeth Truss, Rishi Sunak and, until his resignation, Keir Starmer.

According to Sir Seldon, Number 10 has 3 overlapping functions.

First, it is the official residence of the British Prime Minister. Although it serves as their office, it is also the place where guests from the Royal family and world leaders are entertained.

The Prime Minister also hosts countless receptions and events for a whole range of British and overseas guests, with charitable receptions high up the list.

The building is much larger than it appears from its frontage. The hall with the chequered floor immediately behind the front door leads on to a warren of rooms and staircases. The house in Downing Street was joined to a more spacious and elegant building behind it in the early 18th century.

Number 10 has also spread itself out to the left of the front door, and has taken over much of 12 Downing Street, which is accessed by a corridor that runs through 11 Downing Street – the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Origins and early inhabitants

The area around Downing Street was home to ancient Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman settlements, and was already a prestigious centre of government 1,000 years ago.

The earliest building known to have stood on the site of Downing Street was the Axe brewery owned by the Abbey of Abingdon in the Middle Ages. By the early 1500s, it had fallen into disuse.

The first domestic house known to have been built on the site of Number 10 was a large building leased to Sir Thomas Knyvet in 1581 by Queen Elizabeth I. He was one of the Queen’s favourites and was an MP for Thetford as well as a justice of the peace for Westminster. His claim to fame was the arrest of Guy Fawkes for his role in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

The emergence of Downing Street

George Downing gave his name to the most famous street in the world. Unfortunately, he was such an unpleasant man. Able as a diplomat and a government administrator, he was miserly and at times brutal.

However, George Downing was responsible for the street, its name and the building we know today.

A former diplomat at The Hague serving the Commonwealth, he changed allegiance with finesse. He traded enough secrets to gain a royal pardon in March 1660 and, by the Restoration in May 1660, to be rewarded with a knighthood.

Interested in power and money, he saw an opportunity to make his fortune in property. He had already gained the Crown interest in the land around Hampden House, but could not take possession as it was under lease to Knyvet’s descendants. In 1682, he secured the leases to the property and employed Sir Christopher Wren to design the houses.

The original numbering of the Downing Street houses was completely different from what we see today. The sequence of numbers was haphazard, and the houses tended to be known by the name or title of their occupants. The current Number 10 started out life as Number 5, and was not renumbered until 1779.

The Downing Street house had several distinguished residents. The Countess of Yarmouth lived at Number 10 between 1688 and 1689, and was followed by Lord Lansdowne from 1692 to 1696 and the Earl of Grantham from 1699 to 1703. The last private resident of Downing’s terrace was one Mr Chicken. Little is known about him except that he moved out in the early 1730s.

King George II presented both the house on Downing Street and the house overlooking Horse Guards to Sir Robert Walpole, who held the title First Lord of the Treasury and effectively served as the first Prime Minister. Walpole refused the property as a personal gift. Instead, he asked the king to make it available as an official residence to him and to future First Lords of the Treasury – starting the tradition that continues today. The brass letterbox on the black front door is still engraved with this title.

Walpole took up residence on 22 September 1735, once the townhouse on Downing Street and the house overlooking Horse Guards had been joined together and completely refurbished. Walpole employed architect William Kent, who had already worked on Walpole’s Norfolk home, Houghton Hall, to undertake the work.

Fall and rise of Number 10

At the turn of the 19th century, Downing Street had fallen on hard times. Although Number 10 continued to serve as the Prime Minister’s office, it was not favoured as a home. Most prime ministers preferred to live in their own townhouses.

But by the 1820s, Downing Street had emerged as the centre of government. Prime Minister Viscount Goderich employed the brilliant, quirky architect Sir John Soane, designer of the Bank of England, to make the house more suitable for its high-profile role. Soane created the wood-panelled State Dining Room and the Small Dining Room for elegant entertaining.

But this wasn’t good enough for his successor, Lord Wellington, who only moved in while his own lavish home, Apsley House, was being refurbished. Later leaders, such as Lord Melbourne and Viscount Palmerston, used Number 10 only as an office and for Cabinet meetings. In 1828, Number 11 became the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s official residence, but the surrounding area was becoming seedier, with brothels and gin parlours multiplying. Things became so bad that by 1839, there were plans to demolish Number 10 and the other buildings on the north side of Downing Street to make way for a remodelled Whitehall.

The late 19th and early 20th century saw 10 Downing Street transformed from a humble terraced house into a grand residence with modern facilities – a home and office fit for the most powerful politician in the country. Disraeli persuaded the state to pay for renovation to the entrance halls and public rooms, though he paid for the refurbishment of the private rooms himself. His own first-floor bedroom and dressing room were improved, and a bath with hot and cold water in the First Lord’s Dressing Room was installed for the sum of £150.3s.6d.

When William Gladstone moved into the house for the first time in 1880, he insisted on redecorating, spending £1,555.5s.0d – an enormous sum for the time – on furniture. During his occupancy in 1884, electric lighting was fitted, and the first telephones were installed.

The Marquess of Salisbury, who succeeded Gladstone on one occasion, was the last Prime Minister not to live at Number 10.

Over the years, more and more changes and improvements were made to the house. When Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald first entered the house, he wanted Number 10 to regain some of the grandeur it had during the times of Walpole and Pitt.

Restoration and modernisation

By the 1950s, the material state of 10 Downing Street had reached a crisis point. Bomb damage had worsened existing structural problems: the building was suffering from subsidence, sloping walls, twisting door frames and an enormous annual repair bill.

The Ministry of Works surveyed in 1954 into the state of the structure. The report bounced from Winston Churchill (1951 to 1955) to Anthony Eden (1955 to 1957) to Harold Macmillan (1957 to 1963) as one Prime Minister followed the other. Finally, a committee set up by Macmillan concluded that drastic action was required before the building fell or burned down.

The committee put forward a range of options, including the complete demolition of Numbers 10, 11 and 12 and their replacement with a new building. That idea was rejected, and it was decided that Number 12 should be rebuilt, and Numbers 10 and 11 should be strengthened and their historic features preserved.

The architect Raymond Erith was selected to supervise the work, which was expected to take 2 years and cost £500,000. It ended up taking a year longer than planned and costing double the original estimate. The foundations proved to be so rotten that concrete underpinning was required on a massive scale.

Number 10 was completely gutted. Walls, floors and even the columns in the Cabinet Room and Pillared Room proved to be rotten and had to be replaced. New features were added too, including a room facing onto Downing Street and a veranda at Number 11 for the Chancellor.

It was also discovered that the familiar exterior façade was not black at all, but yellow. The blackened colour was a product of two centuries of severe pollution. To keep the familiar appearance, the newly cleaned yellow bricks were painted black to match their previous colour. Erith’s work was completed in 1963, but not long afterwards, dry rot became apparent and further repairs had to be undertaken.

By 2006, it was clear that the Downing Street complex was no longer able to support the business of the Prime Minister’s Office reliably. Independent surveys established that the building was no longer weather-tight, the heating system was failing, and the information and communications technology (ICT) network was at the limits of its operation. Power outages and water leaks were frequent occurrences and significantly impacted the day-to-day operation of the Prime Minister’s Office.

In addition to deterioration through age, pressures on the buildings had increased dramatically over recent years, through an increase in occupancy (stable at around 50 for many years) to around 170. In 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997 to 2007) authorised a new programme of improvements, with the building remaining operational throughout. Work was launched to address structural failure, renew the infrastructure, improve access and enhance the building’s sustainability.

Structural issues were among the first to be tackled, and a phased exterior repair project was launched to address failing lead guttering, cracking brickwork and other structural issues. The distinctive black colourwash was also renewed, as it had faded away in many areas to reveal the yellow brickwork beneath. During the course of the works, it was discovered that the façade of 11 Downing Street was unstable and had to be secured using 225 stainless steel pins. All work was carried out in consultation with English Heritage.

Other projects have been undertaken to renew the building’s ageing infrastructure and to replace many of the building’s key services, including heating, fire protection and electrical power distribution. Sustainability is a key feature of the programme, and a 10% reduction in carbon emissions was achieved during 2011. Rainwater harvesting was introduced in 2009, providing a sustainable source of water for the garden. Accessibility for disabled visitors has been significantly improved through the introduction of ramps and the modernisation of lifts. Many of the public areas of the building have also been restored, including the front entrance hall, the state and small dining rooms and the study.

An ongoing programme is in place to upgrade facilities to modern standards and to ensure the preservation of this historic building for years to come.

A place of entertainment

Every week, Number 10 is the venue for official functions including meetings, receptions, lunches and dinners.

It is not only heads of state and official dignitaries who visit – functions are held for people from all areas of UK society, including notable achievers, public service employees and charity workers.

Receptions tend to be informal gatherings. Lunches and dinners are more formal events. The Small Dining Room will sit a maximum of 12, and the State Dining Room up to 65 around a large, U-shaped table. The dining table is laid with items from the state silver collection: a range of modern silverware pieces commissioned by the Silver Trust to promote modern British craftsmanship.

NOTE: This article was originally written by Sir Anthony Seldon and posted on Gov.UK website.