Walpole used the ground floor for business, taking the largest room, on the north-west side of the house, as his study. This is now the Cabinet Room. Upstairs on the first floor, the Walpoles lived in the rooms facing onto Horse Guards Parade.
Lady Walpole used today's White Drawing Room as her sitting room, and the present day Terracotta Room served as their dining room. The Walpoles were soon entertaining important guests in their smart house, including George II's wife Queen Caroline, politicians, writers and soldiers.
Number 10 became — as it continues to be today — a place for politics and entertainment. His successors saw the house as a perk of the job, and Prime Ministers Henry Pelham to and the Duke of Newcastle to preferred to live in their own residences. He was very fond of the house and often entertained there. Visitors included the writer Samuel Johnson and Thomas Hansard, founder of the parliamentary reporting system that is still in use today. One guest, Clive of India, was so popular that furniture was made for him, which is still present today in the first floor anteroom and Terracotta Room.
During one memorable dinner party held by Lord North on 7 June , civil unrest broke out in the street outside when angry Protestants unhappy with North's policy towards Roman Catholics rioted all over London, in what became known as the Gordon Riots.
The Grenadier Guards held off a large mob, a situation that might have ended with bloodshed had North not gone outside to warn the protestors of the dangers of being shot, following which the crowd dispersed. North's dinner guests climbed to the top of the house to view the fires burning all over London. Major improvements were made to the house during North's time, including the addition of many distinctive features: the black and white chequerboard floor in the entrance hall, the lamp above the front door and the famous lion's head door knocker.
Following the loss of the American colonies, North resigned and was followed by the Duke of Portland, who was Prime Minister for only 9 months in 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 s, 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. 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 , 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 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. Security also became an issue.
In , Edward Drummond, secretary to Prime Minister Robert Peel — , was murdered in Whitehall on his way back to his home in Downing Street by an assassin who mistook him for Peel. The prestige of Downing Street was reduced even further by the building of the magnificent new Foreign Office building at the end of the s.
George Gilbert Scott's creation, with a huge open court and elaborate state rooms, dwarfed Number 10 opposite.
It even had its own Cabinet Room in which the Cabinet sometimes met, rather than at Number By the time Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister, the house was in poor shape. It was time for modernisation. 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. During his occupancy in , 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 Balfour was the first inhabitant of Number 10 to bring a motor car to Downing Street.
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.
Missing a proper library or at least, one containing more than just Hansard reports , MacDonald set about creating one.
The custom of the Prime Minister and other ministers donating books to the library continues to this day.
Central heating was installed in and work began to convert the labyrinth of rooms in the attic, which had formerly been used by servants, into a flat for the Prime Minister. This unrest and fierce opposition would continue, and civil war in Ireland was only averted with the outbreak of the First World War in August The Cabinet Room at Number 10 was the nerve centre of Britain's war effort. Asquith had been forced to take on the additional role of Secretary of State for War following the resignation of the incumbent in March , but quickly appointed Lord Kitchener following the outbreak of war.
On 15 April , Number 10 was the site of a meeting between General Haig, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in France, and the Cabinet to go over the detail of the planned Somme offensive, later known as the Battle of the Somme. During a Cabinet split on 25 May caused by public outcry at allegations the army had been under-supplied with shells and the failed offensive in the Dardanelles, for which Kitchener and Churchill respectively were blamed , Kitchener was stripped of his control over munitions and strategy, and Churchill lost his post as First Lord of the Admiralty.
As a result of the split, Asquith formed a coalition government with the opposition Conservatives, whose leader was future Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law.
Asquith remained leader of the coalition until his resignation on 5 December Under Prime Minister Lloyd George the number of staff at Number 10 expanded and offices spilled out into the garden to cope with the demands of the administration of the war. In the first days of its existence, the War Cabinet met times. This cabinet took total responsibility for the war, and on 3 occasions it sat as the Imperial War Cabinet when prime ministers from the Dominions attended.
It provided a vigour previously lacking from the war effort. Highly able young men were appointed to collect and collate data and to bypass slow moving government departments. They were not liked by diehard civil servants, who they continually bypassed. However, the men from the Garden Suburb gave Lloyd George the one thing Asquith seemingly never had — up-to-date, meaningful statistics. Their work was invaluable, providing the War Cabinet with data on merchant ships sunk and UK farm production, issues essential to address if the country was not to be starved into defeat.
Lloyd George made an appearance at one of the first floor windows to acknowledge them. During the s the world's eyes rested on Europe. With rising tensions between Germany and Czechoslovakia, the prime ministers of France and Britain did what they could in an attempt to avoid another war.
On 12 September , thousands gathered at Downing Street to listen to Hitler's speech on the final night of the Nuremberg Rally, convinced Britain stood on the brink of war. As tension mounted further in Europe, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made several attempts to appease the situation, and Number 10 became the focus of international attention. The Munich Agreement was signed and war — for now — had been averted.
Chamberlain gave the speech a second time, from a first floor window of Number His wife, Margot Asquith, undertook a programme of refurbishment when she and Herbert moved into the property, and the door was repainted in the fashion of the time. Sign of the times The greatest change in the history of the door came in , however, following a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street by the IRA.
Upkeep and door maintenance for Number 10 Today, there is no definitive Downing Street door. Paul 23rd January I am fascinated to know who made 10 downing streets door? Behind the Georgian entrance lie approximately rooms, connected by a labyrinth of halls and corridors — complete with a 0. Following the death of Count Bothmar, who owned the mansion at the rear of No.
Walpole — considered by many as the first British Prime Minster — accepted on the basis that the property would be offered to future government leaders. The esteemed architect William Kent was chosen to join the properties in a process that took three years to complete. The last private occupant of the 10 Downing Street terrace was a man called Mr.
He was resident of one of the three properties which comprise the current 10 Downing Street. Walpole convinced Mr. Chicken to move to another property on the street in the early s. Eric Robson chairs a special edition from Number Paul Schooling shares the story of being told off.
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