10 Downing Street

10 Downing Street is the residence and the office of the Prime Minister of the the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, located on Downing Street in the Cité of Westminster, close to the rooms of the Parliament, in the middle of London. The residence is officially that of the First Lord off the Treasury, but this station is held jointly with that of Prime Minister since 1905.

The black door of the number ten is well-known with the the United Kingdom. Although the house at this address appears to be a house among others, the access to all the street Downing Street is subjected to police controls.

Description

With its modest stone front and its simple black main door, Number Ten , as it is affectionately called, is undoubtedly the most famous address of London. The building is close to the Palais of Westminster (rooms of the Parliament) and of Buckingham Palace, the residence of the queen.

Located in the Quoted of Westminster at London, Number Ten is the center of the British government, physically and politically. Number Ten is thus not only the residence of the Prime Minister but also its work place. One finds there offices for itself, his secretaries, assistants and adviser and of many conference rooms and dining rooms where it receives other British leaders and foreign representatives.

The building called today Number Ten , in the beginning, was composed of three houses: the house At the back (house of the bottom), Number Ten itself, and a close small house. The house At the back was a manor built one around 1530; the original Number Ten was a house of modest center town built in 1685. In 1732, the king George II offers the 10 Downing Street and H ouse At the back to Robert Walpole (often called the “first” Prime Minister) in thanks of services rendered to the nation. Walpole accepted in the condition which it is about one gift to the function of “First Lord off the Treasury” rather than has itself personally. The king accepted and the property is transmitted since to each “First Lord”. Between 1732 and 1735, Walpole charged William Kent with joining together the two houses. It is this increased house which is known today like “Number 10 Downing Street”.

As generous as this gift can seem, with the passing, emménagement was not an immediate success. In spite of its impressive size and the convenient site, “Number 10” was not an attractive dwelling. This was partly due has its poor construction on a marshy ground and with the chronic negligence of maintenance. Especially, Walpole shows the example not the rule and the position of Prime Minister did not become a part established of the British constitution before the beginning of the nineteenth century; it was not systematically related to the office of “First Lord off the Treasury”. Expensive to maintain, neglected and passably degraded, the house failed to be shaven on several occasions.

However, the “Number 10 Dowing Street” survived and is to be connected with many great men of state and great events of the recent British history, and people came to appreciate his historical value. As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared into 1985 that “ Number 10 became one of the most invaluable jewels of the national heritage”.

History of the buildings

“House At the back” before 1733

1530

“House At the back” was built around 1530 beside the Palais of Whitehall, the main home of the monarchs at the time. It was one of the various buildings which have form the “Cockpit Lodgings” “residences of the hole of cock”, thus named because they were attached to a room of cockfight installed in an octagonal building. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Cockpit was converted into theater and concert hall but kept its name. After the Restoration, some of the meetings of the first Cabinet were held there in secrecy.

At the time Tudor, “House At the back” was the house of the guard of the palate of Whitehall responsible for the maintenance of the palate, including the Cockpit. During many years, it was occupied by Thomas Knevett (gold Knyvet), famous for the capture of Guy Fawkes in 1605 and the discovery of the conspiracy against Jacques I {{er}}. The previous year, Knevett left “house At the back” and occupies the house close with the current site to Number Ten.

1604

For this time, family members royal and government have lived “house At the back”. In 1604, the 4 years old son of Jacques Ier, Charles, prince de Galles (future Charles I {{er}}) lived here briefly. After the property was extended to include the small tennis court or Henry VIII played his favorite game, and a kitchen and parts for the servants were built, at eight years the Elisabeth princess moved in. Elisabeth Stuart lived with “house At the back” until 1613 and her marriage with the Elector Palatine to go to Hanover. , It was large the mother of George, the Electeur of Hanover, which was to become king d' Angleterre in 1714, and large the mother of the king George II, which offered the house to Walpole in 1732. Thus over a century “house At the back” symbolically binds the Stuart and the Hanover.

1650

Oliver Cromwell lived here between 1650 and 1654 and its widow, one year, in 1659. George Monk 1 {{er}} duke of Albemarle, the general who made possible the Restoration of monarchy, lived here of 1660 until her death in 1671. Albemarle was “First Commissioner” Great Treasury Commission of 1667-1672 which transformed royal accountancy and allowed to the sovereigns a better control of expense. These measurements also established the foundations of the legal authority of the load of “First Lord off the Treasury”. The man supposed to be the person in charge of the development of these measurements is the secretary of Albemarle, Sir George Downing. Albemarle is the first nobody associated with the Treasury living what will off become finally the house of the First Lord the Treasury and the Prime Minister.

After the death of Albemarle, the prince d' Orange, future Guillaume III, probably lived “house At the back” some time whereas it returned visit to his uncle, Charles II. In spring 1671, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, taken possession of the places while becoming a member directing of the Ministry for Cabale. Buckingham rebuilds it almost entirely with the considerable load of the government. The result was a spectacular and roomy manor, parallel with the Palate of Whitehall. Of its withdrawn decorative garden there was a full sight on St James' S Park where stags grazed and the noble ones walked on the ways bordered of sculpture.

1676

After Buckingham took its retirement in 1676, Lady Charlotte Fitzroy, girl illegitimate of Charles II, at 12 years, moved in when she married the Earl de Lichfield, Maître of cavalry. Like preparation for the new tenant, the Crown authorized another major rebuilding. This work included widening it of the garden and the addition of a stage, giving three principal stages to the house, plus an attic and more the basement. The resulting manor, which was known like the Litchfield House, is always visible today, it is the posterior frontage of Number Ten.

The reasons of such a rebuilding are a enigma. Probably there was a fire, but the most probable explanation is that the house had subsided, causing structural damage. Westminster was formerly a marsh and a building in the sector requires deep pillars of foundation to avoid structural damage due to depression. At the time, the house rested on not very deep foundations, an error of design which will cause problems until 1960 when modern the `' 10 Downing street'' was rebuilt on a series of deep pillars of foundation.

1690 Charlotte and her family follow James II in the exile after the Glorieuse Revolution. In 1690, the new king and the new queen offer the house to Henry Nassau, Lord Auverquerque, a Dutch aristocrat who had helped Guillaume III, Prince d' Orange to jointly obtain the Crown for him and his wife, Marie Stuart. Also a Master of cavalry, Henry Nassau anglicizes his name for Overkirk, and lives the house until his death in 1708.

The house returns to the Crown to dead of the widow of Henry Nassau in 1720, and the Treasury emits an order “to repair and arrange for the best and in the most substantial way” at a cost of 2 522 £, a very important sum at the time. Work includes: “The back access in Downing street to be repaired and a new door, a New House Necessary to make; to destroy the Useless Passage in the past made for the Young ladies of Honor to reach Downing street, when the queen lived with the Cockpit, Installer a large Lead Tank & the pipes and to install Water in the house & a new frame for this Tank. ”

These supplemented repairs, Johann Caspar von Bothmar, count Bothmar, the emissary of Hanover and the adviser with close to George I and II, settles. Although the count Bothmar complains bitterly about “poor Condition of the Premises”, it lives there until its death in 1732.

The residence of Georges Downing before 1733

Georges Downing, the man who built Downing Street, was a spy. To have joined the parliamentary Forces like Pasteur shortly after, Oliver Cromwell named off it Scoutmaster General Scotland in order to espionner with the account of the army. During the Interregnum, Cromwell did it ambassador with $the Hague where its first mission was again espionage. The task of Downing was to supervise Charles Stuart, the applicant with the throne in exile, and to bring back its activities to Cromwell.

Astute and covetous, Downing invests in the real estate and a great richness drew some. In 1654 it acquired the lease of a piece of ground in the south of the park Saint James, not far from the Parliament. It enviseagea to build a line of dwellings there, destinies “… to shelter people of quality…” the street on which it built indeed these dwellings bears now its name, and broadest of these last off belongs to the official residence of the “First Lord the Treasury” and Prime Minister. As prompt as were its investments, it proved nevertheless that during thirty years, of the legal complications prevented Downing of construires its dwellings.

The civil authorities followed one another repetition during the Civil wars, the Interrègne and the Restauration. Crafty one and without scruples, Downing was surviving. With died Cromwell in 1658, it changed edge, sticking to Prince Charles, and started with espionner for its account. Putting its network of agents at work, Downing helped the Prince to recover the throne. What it did be exactly forever clearly, but had to be of importance because in 1660 Charles made Downing knight in Breda and appointed again it ambassador in $the Hague.

The residence of the first Lord: 1733-1735

When the Bothmar tale dies, the possession of the house returns to the Crown. George II seized this occasion to offer it to sir Robert Walpole like a gift in thanks of services rendered to the nation. By chance, the king had also obtained the beams on the stables and two properties on Downing Street, whose number ten, and adds those to its offer.

Walpole does not want to accept the gift personally. Perspicacious and rich, he, perhaps, did not want to overload himself while adding to his vast assets. Or perhaps, it knows that these houses were built on a marshy ground and would be expensive to maintain. At the same time, he does not want to probably offend the king by refusing the gift directly. Whatever its motivations, Walpole proposes - and the king authorizes - that the Crown gives the properties to the Office of First Lord of the Treasury. There Walpole would live like the holder the First Lord, but would leave it for its substitute.

Made arrangement, Walpole starts to link the properties. Wanting to extend the new house to the exit is, Walpole persuades Mr. Chicken, the tenant of the close small house, to move in another house in Downing Street. The old residence of Mr. Chicken, the stables and “house At the back” are then built-in “Number Ten”.

Walpole requires of William Kent to join the buildings. The project of Kent is a masterpiece. It joint the two larger houses by building a structure on two levels on part of space enters the houses, consistent in a long part with the ground floor and several parts on the floor. Space remaining is transformed into a court. It then connects the houses of Downing Street with a corridor, called now the passage of the ministry for finances.

Having joined the houses, Kent refits them: demolishing walls and the floors, removing staircases, and dismounting the chimneys. The craftsmen create a beautiful triple staircase hones some in the principal section of the Number Ten original. With an iron balustrade and a slope of mahogany tree, it goes from the ground floor on the first floor. During two hundred years, the staircase of Kent was the first architectural part that the visitors could see while entering to 10 Downing Street. The portraits of all the Prime Ministers since sir Robert Walpole decorate the rising wall at its side. During the restorations of the years 1960, the staircase of Kent was transferred to the back from the house and new with any visible support was installed. The portraits of the Prime Ministers always decorate the wall.

Kent leaves with “house At the back” its three stages but overcomes its center section with a pediment. To off allow a faster access to “House Commons” Walpole, the northern entry with dimensions St James' S Park is walled and carries it on Downing Street becomes the entry of the new house.

The reconception and the rebuilding took two years. The September 23rd 1735, “London Daily Post” announces that Walpole moved in “Number Ten”: “Yesterday, the Honourable Good Mr Robert Walpole, with his Lady and her Family moved of their House of St James' S Square at his new House being contiguous with the Treasury of St James' S Park”.

The family of Walpole did not enter by the door which is now famous. That one will be installed forty years later. However, the door of Kent was also modest, contradicting elegance and interior space. The news, but temporary, residence of the family of Walpole have sixty principal parts, decorated with floors with hard wood and elegant marble, moulding, pillars and mantelpieces out of marble. The sketches of Kent show seven principal parts at the ground floor and the first floor, all with beautiful sights on the garden or St James' S Park. Largest is the study of Walpole, measuring twelve meters by six (forty feet by twenty) with the enormous windows. The part was and is always splendid, its impressive size is seen easily in many tables and photographs. My Lord' S Study (literally “the Study of My Lord”) (as Kent named in its drawings) would be later famous as the ministerial room where the Prime Ministers meet their ministers. A portrait of Walpole to the mantelpiece behind the chair of the Prime Minister is the only image in the part.

After having moved in, Walpole orders that part of the grounds in front of its study is transformed into a garden. Emitted letters patent in April 1736 establish that: “… A piece of garden located in the park St James' S of Its Majesty, & belonging & contiguous to the house being now inhabited by the Honourable Good the Chancellor Of the Ministry for finances of Its Majesty, was lately made & adjusted with the Load… Crown increases”. The same document confirmed that “Number Ten Downing Street” was: “Intended to be annexed & plain at the Office of the Treasury of Its Majesty & to be & remain for the Use & the Dwelling of the first Police chief of the Treasury of His Majesty for the moment”. Thus it was declared in writing that the First Lord of the Treasury has an official house.

“My vast but not very convenient house”: 1735-1805

With eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 10 Downing Street was generally seen like a small building, unimportant and poor which was very with the lower part of the quality and the standing of those had by the leader pars. William Pitt lived in Number Ten Downing Street more than nineteen years, more than any other minister of the Crown, before or after him. There he lived three months like the chancellor of the ministry for finances in 1783, then a nineteen years total like the Prime Minister of 1783 to 1802 and 1804 to 1806.

At the time where Pitt moves in has Downing Street, the outside of the house resembles much so that it is today, because of the work made over one period which starts in 1766. At this time, the father of Pitt is the Prime Minister, but the house is occupied by Charles Townsend, the chancellor of the ministry for finances. Before moving in, Townsend indicates that the house is under a terrible condition of dilapidation and has great need for repairs. On its instructions, architects directed a study of Downing Street and the results were transmitted in a letter to the Treasury:

“… We examined the House of Downing Street belonging to the Treasury, & found the Walls of the old part of the aforesaid the House close to the street to degraded much, the Floors & the Chimneys lowered much of level & any party Wall between the House being contiguous on the west coast… We thus made a project & Estimation for rebuilding of the frontage dimensions street & also the side Wall is corridor, construction of a party Wall on the west coast to prevent any fire hazard, to repair the remaining part of the Old Building industry & Eriger up a contiguous additional Building. Any Work… will return to the sum of Last nine hundreds & Fifty books. ”

It is astonishing that such repairs and rebuildings are necessary since it is thirty years old only that the three houses forming Number Ten were completely rebuilt by Kent for Walpole. The letter suggests that the damage is caused by the not very deep foundations, especially those under the house of front, built by Downing, and who at the time, has more than eighty years.

The rebuilding of Townsend started almost immediately, and continued while him and its family occupies the house. But, inexplicably, work appears to have taken much time. A note of Lord North at the Office of Work, gone back to September 1774, requires that work of frontage of the house, “which was started with a Good of the Treasury dated August 9th, 1766”, be finished.

The entry of Downing Street was rebuilt for this period. Carried out in the elegant style géorgien by the architect Kenton Bends, it was probably supplemented in 1772. Knowing the importance of the discussions which had taken place already in these walls, the frontage is a masterpiece of the understatement English (practice to minimize the dires). Modeste and narrow, it consists of only one white stone walk made leading to a modest brick frontage. The small door has six panels, made black oak, is surrounded by boxes cream-coloured and avoided color above an attractive semicircular window. Painted in white in the center of the door, between the higher panels and of the medium, the number “10”; between the two panels of the medium, a stop out of black iron in the shape of head of the lion; and right with the lower part of the stop, a box with copper letters with the inscription “First Lord off the Treasury”. A black fence of ironwork with pointed amounts in front of the house and on each side of the entry. An arch in double twist with the top the entry supports a lamp with iron gas surmounted by a crown. Inside, Couse installed in the entry of the black and white marble squares, always in place. At the same time, he also added the large projecting frontage to the small house on the side of Whitehall, incorporated at the time of Walpole.

Only seventeen years passed since the very substantial changes started for Townsends, but they were not supplemented. At the end of August 1783, the Portland cement Duke moves of Downing Street because there needs repairs. This new need appears in 1781. In March of the following year that a consistent committee of North and others after having inspected the condition of the house, find that the sums spent until there were insufficient and takes account of a declaration of the Council of Work, informant: “repairs, the Changes & the Additions at the House of Chancellor of the ministry for finances will return to the sum of £5,580, in addition to the sum for which they have already a good of His Majesty. And requesting a good for the aforementioned sum of £5,580 - and also requesting a payment of this sum so that they can pay the Workmen”.

That is done just before Pitt moves in Downing Street like the Chancellor of the ministry for finances. Apparently work are still in progress when Pitt takes residence, which can explain the choice of its words in a letter with his/her mother, “installed… in the part of my vast but not very convenient house”. They seem not to be finished with satisfaction at the time or Portland cement moves in, on April 15th, 1783, a few weeks before its first important diner, it is noted: “Mr. Couse reported that having been charged to visit the House of Downing Street it had ordered an Estimate of the various Work wished by the Portland cement Duchess”.

But it is not before August that repairs start. August 8th, “Sir William Chambers receive a Letter of Mr. Beirne, the private secretary of the Portland cement Duke, relating to painting, etc, House of Downing Street”. Later this month, it is announced in the press that, “the Portland cement Duke moves towards the House of Burlington, where its Grace will reside while its house in Downing Street is repaired”.

In addition to required repairs, meticulous changes are undertaken. The ministerial room, for example, is wide, giving him its modern appearance. This is obtained by removing the wall of the east and by rebuilding it several feet in the contiguous part of the secretaries. The part of the secretary became smaller and its chimney is eccentric. At the entry of the ministerial room, a screen of coupled Corinthian columns (four in all) was set up. They support a moulded entablature, which continues around the part. In the same way, the large reception room above - the part of contiguous angle the building of the Treasury of Kent, and giving outside on the parade ground of the horse guards - was increased by replacing the wall of the south with a screen of two ionic columns. At the same time, the pediment on the frontage of the horse guards is removed and a simple parapet is set up. Robert Taylor is the architect to whom this work was entrusted; he was anobli with his completion.

Like city in the “Memories of Pitt” of Cleland, “… the expenditure to repair the house of Downing Street, in which it had the honor to place for a few months… has, one year or two before it comes, cost the public 10 000 £ and more, and for the seven years which precede this repair, the annual expenditure had been a little less 500 £. The changes which cost £10,000, he declared, to consist of a new kitchen and a new office, extremely convenient, with several comfortable parts of housing; and it observed, that most of the cost, has what it included/understood, was caused by the bad foundations of the house”.

Four days later, on June 21st, Morning Herald comments on: “500 pounds per annum before Great Repair, and 11 000 great Repair itself! Such an amount of cost this extraordinary building the country - for half of the sum a much better residence could have been bought”.

" My Lone, Rambling House": 1806 - 1902

At that time, several eminent Prime Ministers, in particular the Duke of Wellington, choose to live in their London residences personal rather more roomy and imposing, leaving the use of Number Ten to the official ones less graded. Between 1742 and 1780, only two Prime Ministers (Lord Grenville and Lord North) live really Ten Downing Street. After 1834, no Prime Minister lived there until Benjamin Disraeli moves in 1877. In fact, during thirty years, between 1847 and 1877, the part of dwelling was vacant.

It is Disraeli which renews the association of Ten Downing Street with the First Lord of the Treasury. When he becomes Prime Minister, he at first sight does not see any need to move in Number Ten. However, two years later during the crisis of the Middle East, Disraeli, old of soixante-douze years and paralyzed by the drop, does not find possible any more to go even the short distance from the Gardens of Whitehall to Downing Street for the Ministérielles discussions. He wrote with a friend: “I was very sick and remains very sick, and am completely unable to climb, the drop and bronchitis turned in asthma… Sometimes I am obliged to remain sitted all the night, and the sleep to finally takes me… I succeeded in attending each council, but I cannot walk in this moment of Whitehall to Downing Street, but am obliged to cut even this walk, which I could have repeated fifty times one day”.

In November 1877, Disraeli moves in has Number Ten, the first foisqu' it is used as residence of the Prime Minister since Peel left thirty years there rather. By anticipation, the higher parts had been open and had been aired, and the decorators had been called several front months to prepare estimates. Their estimate to make the large living room just, described like “the Part of Reception for Lord Beaconsfield”, alarms the Treasury. The cost of painting of the ceiling in a simple color, to decorate the walls and to insert an elegant paper in the panels, and to underline the cornice in the colors and gold arrives in very at £782 for one part. The cost of a new entry and new squares only is £40. An immediate letter of the Treasury, dated November 21st, 1876, declares:

My Lords are trustful that each effort will be made to limit the expenditure, as they could regret seeing greater contracted expenditure than is absolutely essential to place the part under a condition appropriate to the uses for which it is conceived. Beyond this they could not agree to continue, as it not very judicious to spend of large sums on so old house and for which the accesses and other arrangements are so definitely defective. They must hope that the now subjected Estimate oneself then found suitable for reduction.

The final cost was discounted of £200 of the original estimate. But after it there with the question of furnishing the part. Disraeli insists that the Treasury buys all the pieces of furniture necessary. It stresses that this was the practice in the close house, with No 11, the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, since a one century quarter. Indeed, a quarrel between Disraeli and Gladstone more than twenty years rather had caused this has to change with No 11. Previously, each new Chancellor of the Exchequer had been necessary to buy the pieces of furniture of the outgoing tenant. Gladstone, by taking again the place of Disraeli in 1853, declined to do it, and required of the Council Work to buy it has its place - at least the pieces of furniture used for the official businesses. Although Disraeli authorized in theory, he insisted that the old agreement “as between gentlemen” observed for the present; new arrangement would take effect with the following transfer. An acrimoniously correspondence follow-up. On this occasion, Gladstone prevailed, and the pieces of furniture were bought by the state. To prevent future arguments, a note of the ministry for finances clearly defined the degree of responsibility for the leaving and entering tenant.

Maintaining the tables turned, and it is Disraeli which prevailed. A practice similar to that used for the tenant of N° 11 was developed for the tenant of N° 10, the Prime Minister. A note of the ministry for finances (dated May 30th, 1878) defined as the public place the entry, the staircase and the parts of the first stage (including the Ministériel cabinet), and specified that those should be furnished with the load with the state. All other sectors of the house definite like were deprived, and furnishings are bought there by the new Prime Minister by a process of flow and credit. When a new Prime Minister moves in, an inventory would be taken pieces of furniture already in place, with an estimate of their value. To this list the cost of additional pieces of furniture required by the new occupant would be firstly added, and, secondly the cost of the repairs made with the pieces of furniture during its occupation. With his departure, the First Outgoing minister would then pay the wear, calculated by withdrawing the value of the pieces of furniture from this moment of the initial total.

This procedure was accepted during almost twenty years, until November 1897. Since, the state maintained and renewed all pieces of furniture of N° 10, even in the residential parts. The Prime Ministers bring only their personal articles.

Having had the last word for which must pay the supply of the part of recently decorated principal reception, Disraeli spent the money of the state liberally. It chose a series of eighteen parts covered with silk - two couches, four armchairs, four chairs and eight small chairs - at a cost of £286 10s, with the silk curtains matched with the cornices and fringes for £145, three tables for £122, and two beautiful Persian carpets two fine Axminster Persian carpets, large for the part itself and another for the corridor for £178. It have also that carpenters install a floor of decorative parquet floor partial of three foot (90 cm) around the part for £50. Again, the house becomes the residence of the Prime Minister, and to commemorate the event, the Queen sends to Disraeli bowls of primulas, its preferred flower, of its garden of spring of Windsor.

But after thirty years of use as office, a Downing Street is in a sad state of degradation. Some parts are deteriorated, the private apartment of Disraeli is inadequate and needs a modernization. Disraeli finds quickly that much more would need to be made to make old place a house, as that had been made for Younger Pitt and Peel. In August 1878, the Office of Work makes a new estimate supplements and sends it to the Treasury asking for the additional expenditure of £2,350 to install hot and cold running water, creating and providing a new living room, repairing the staircase and the official part of the Prime Minister, the room to be slept and the anteroom, and “painting, cleaning, (and) bleaching with lime” the various offices. For another £30, Disraeli also buys of Mr. Richard Evens a gloss with copper candle for the living room to match that already there.

For its last period at the office, in 1881, William Gladstone, which is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister at the same time, resides in all numbers 10,11 and 12 for him even and its family.

Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister with the whole beginning of the 20th century, is the last Prime Minister has not to be First Lord off the Treasury.

An Invaluable Jewel: 1902-present

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ministers for the Crown receive minimal wages and are supposed to live of their own richness. Consequently, Number 10 and 11 are used as Townhouse S in which the ministers live with their own servants. But when in the Years 1920, the Labor first Prime Minister , Ramsay MacDonald, becomes Prime Minister, not having the richness of the former Prime Ministers, finds itself moving in a house almost not furnished, surrounded by personnel of house of which it cannot be allowed, some gaining even more than him.

In the Years 1940, the economic and social changes lead to major changes in the use of 10 Downing Street. Instead of being a large residence been useful by personnel, it becomes an office of work, with the Prime Minister and his office relegated to a small apartment created in the old parts of the personnel, on the last floor. The tightened nature of this apartment and its site above what is now active offices, carried out some Prime Ministers to be inhabited elsewhere. Some, of the nineteenth and twentieth century had larger and more impressive Townhouse S with domestic and in the facts lived there. Harold Wilson lived in his own house deprived in the Lord North Street during its second mandate of Prime Minister in 1974 - 76, but, with the assistance of the press, maintained appearance to live 10 Downing Street, leaving secretly by a side door to turn over to its true house after being photographed entering by the main door. The other Prime Ministers lived the Maison of Admiralty in the Années 1950 while Number 10 was in rebuilding, or in the Années 1990 according to an attack with the mortar of the WILL GO.

In the same way, after the Legislative Elections of 1997 at the conclusion which the Workers party seized the power, an exchange was carried out by the holders of the two titles. Tony Blair was a man married with three children always living at the house, while its counterpart, Gordon Brown, were unmarried with its catch of station. Thus, although Number 10 continued to be the official residence of the Prime Minister and contained the offices of the Prime Minister, Blair and its family lived in fact in most roomy Numéro 11, whereas Brun lived the narrower apartments of Number 10. After the marriage of Brown and the fourth child of Blairs, G. Brown moved in its private apartment near and the Blair family occupied the two apartments.

In the facts, two centuries and halves of use as residences of government led to as well bonds between the houses as it can be hard to know where one finishes and the other starts. The walls separating not only the houses on Downing Street, but also the houses adjacent, behind them, on Horseguards Parades, were bored and the buildings were amalgamated.

In the Années 1950, it appeared that N° 10 was in such a state that it was in immediate danger of collapse. The pillars in the ministerial part which held the upper floors in place were held together only by a little more than two hundred years of coats of paint and varnish, with the rotted wood of origin leaving almost only dust. After having considered to demolish the whole street, it was decided that, as for the White House in the years 1950, the frontage would be preserved while the interior would be dismounted to the foundations, and a copy of the original builds by using modern steel and concrete, over which original interior installations could be grafted. After examination of the exterior facade, the manufacturers discovered that the already visible color black in the first photographs of the mediums of the nineteenth century was misleading - the bricks were in fact “yellow”, the black aspect being the two century old product of severe pollution. It was decided to preserve the “traditional” aspect of the most recent times, therefore the recently cleaned yellow bricks were then painted in black to resemble their known appearance.

In a letter with Christophe Jones whom it reproduced in his book No 10 Downing Street, The Story off has House (History of a House), the Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister summarized the feelings that it and much of other British have towards the house which it lived by hanging eleven years of 1979 to 1990: “Very first Ministers are intensely conscious that, like the tenants and the stewards of No 10 Downing Street, they have with their load one of most invaluable of the jewels of the inheritance of the nation”.

The office of the Prime Minister

The office of the Prime Minister, for whom the " terms; Downing Street" and " No 10" are synonymous, is located in 10 Downing Street and is directed by'' a Chief off Staff'' and is equipped by a mixture with civils servant with career and special advisers. It provides to the Prime Minister the support and the council on the policy, the communications with the Parliament, the services of the government and the relations with the public and the press.

Organization before 2001

No 10 Private Office (relations with the Parliament and Whitehall)
No 10 Press Office - the Press Office grew in importance with the attention of the media on the Prime Minister. The press attaché of Thatcher Bernard Ingham was one of his most important advisers. The influence D `Alastair Campbell as a press attaché of Blair was larger still.
No 10 Unit Political (council on the strategic problems and the detailed questions of policy)
No 10 Political office (Connection with the party and the district of the Prime Minister)
No 10 Appointments Office

Organization after 2001

The office was reorganized in 2001 in 3 directions:

Political and government taken again
A functions of the Private office and the unit of policy. Prepare the council for the Prime Minister and coordinates the development and the implementation of the policy through the departments
the Communication and the strategy, contains 3 units:

the Press Office: person in charge of the relations with the press
the strategic unit of communications
the research unit and of information: the information based on the facts to N° 10

provides the Government and the political relations: deal with the relations with the parties and the public.

The changes were to strengthen the office of the first. However, some commentators suggested that the reforms of Blair created something similar to a service of the “Prime Minister”. The reorganization caused the fusion of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministerial Office a number of units of the Ministerial Office are directly under the responsibility of the Prime Minister.

The Principal Private Secretary of the Prime Minister (currently Olivier Robbins) was in the past the head of the Office of the Prime Minister. He is now directed by the Personnel manager of the Prime Minister (Jonathan Powell). With the exception of the Parliamentary Private Secretary of the Prime Minister, and the Director of Political Operations (John McTernan), which is appointed political people, all are civils servant.

Safety

Heavy security measures are present, but not always visible. An police officer is held traditionally in front of the door of Number 10, a door which outside does not have a keyhole and can be open only of the interior. Another guard is of service on other side of the door, day and night, there is thus always somebody to open to the Prime Minister whatever the hour to which it returns to the house. The gates were installed at the two ends of the street during the mandate of Margaret Thatcher. People always have access to the street, while passing from the security checks and by respecting a certain protocol. With the gate, a station is where several heavily armed police officers ensure the guard. The protection of the ministers in London east ensured by the Group of Protection of Diplomats (DPG) of the Forces Metropolitan of Police force (MPS), on information of the Security service.

Other more discrete security measures exist, for example, of the police officers armed as a civilian on the roofs with the street and near Whitehall even. He was evoked the existence of a bunker, connected to the other places of government and of transport, under the street, but this neither officially neither was confirmed nor denied.

The most serious fault in safety arrived on February 7th, 1991, when L `GOES Provisional used a white van parked in Whitehall to launch a projectile of mortar. This one exploded in the garden of 10 Downing Street, breaking all the windows of the ministerial part while the Prime Minister of then John Major carried out a meeting of the cabinet. Major moved at the House of admiralty during repairs.

Relations of press

Daily press conferences are currently given by the official spokesperson of the Prime Minister since Number 10 . Those are published on the Web site of Downing Street and DowningStreetSays.org (see external bonds).

Occupants of 10 Downing Street and The House At the Back (of 1650 with now)

The Prime Ministers are in fatty .

Anecdote

Four cats lived 10 Downing Street and were used for dératiser the residence and to eliminate the other small noxious animals: Petra (? - 1973), Wilberforce (1973 - 1987), Humphrey (1989 - 1997) and Sybil (2007).

See too

External bonds

Official site
George Downing and his Street
http://www.downingstreetsays.org/

Google Maps - Downing Street, Westminster, Greater London, SW1

10 Downing Street

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