The White State Drawing Room, containing works by J.M.W. Turner, with a view of the Terracotta State Drawing Room beyond.
As executive residences go, a terraced house in a cul-de-sac is modest when compared to the White House or Élysée Palace, but measured in terms of continuous history, 10 Downing Street it is hard to match. The Earl of Liverpool managed the Napoleonic Wars from here, Churchill was in residence to fight Hitler, and it was here that Thatcher took on the Argentinian military junta. How did a terrace become such a famous political address?
During the seventeenth century, George Downing, an Anglo-Irish jack-of-diverse-trades, abandoned his pulpit and chaplaincy for soldiering, became Cromwell’s intelligence chief, and as Britain’s ambassador to The Hague, expeditiously switched sides in time for the Restoration. Making his peace with the Crown, George acquired a knighthood, along with some marshland by St James’s Park, and re-invented himself as a property developer. If the designs were Sir Christopher Wren, the houses were jerry-built on a bog, but George took a handsome profit and had the street named after him.
The White State Drawing Room, containing works by J.M.W. Turner, with a view of the Terracotta State Drawing Room beyond.
Decades later, with 5 Downing Street comprising two separate houses (later numbered 10), King George II presented the properties to Robert Walpole, First Lord of HM Treasury. Seemingly content with the splendours of Houghton Hall, his Norfolk country seat, Walpole suggested the houses be held in perpetuity for future holders of that office now known as Prime Minister. William Kent was hired to join both properties and rebuild their interiors, and three year’s work produced sixty rooms with marble floors, pillars, fireplaces and crown moulding, and splendid views across the park; the finished product cost a modest £20,000. With further building land required, a gentleman named Mr Chicken in an adjoining house was ‘lent upon’ to vacate.
Heads of state, from Assad to Zuma, have made their journeys to Number 10, as well as countless celebrities in arts and sports. For all, a tour of the house begins at the celebrated front door, once black oak, though armoured with blast-proof steel since a mortar attack by Provisional IRA mortar in 1991, but still retaining a lion head knocker and letter box whose inscription reads ‘First Lord of the Treasury’.
The Grand Staircase is lined with pictures of every Prime Minister of 10 Downing Street in chronological order.
The entrance hall’s black and white checkerboard floor put in by Kenton Couse, Secretary to the Board of Works, during Lord North’s tenure, complements the white fireplace used as a backdrop for photo calls, in which smiles and handshakes might suggest improved international relations. A more unusual hall furnishing is a hooded guard’s chair by Thomas Chippendale. The ever-chiming long case clock by Benson of Whitehaven so irked Churchill that he ordered its striking gear-train-operating bell-ringing mechanism silenced. If a portrait of Walpole overshadows other paintings, a small picture of ‘Gorgeous’ George Downing remains conspicuous.
By the foot of the central staircase stands an exquisitely crafted wooden globe gifted by François Mitterand to Margaret Thatcher upon the occasion of his 1984 state visit. Next, the Pillared State Drawing Room, the first of three inter-linked State Drawing rooms, is entered, often used for the signing of international agreements or for grand receptions. Double Ionic pillars stand at one end, reflected by Ionic motifs in the panelling and door surrounds, while a vast Persian carpet covers the floor. Between 1979 and 1990, a portrait of William Pitt the Younger hung above the fireplace, replaced, perhaps significantly, by one of Queen Elizabeth I only after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation.
The Terracotta State Drawing Room’s name changes to suit its colour. Once blue, Mrs Thatcher, surprisingly, had it painted green, with Doric columns put in and a Palladian over-mantle fitted over the fireplace with the Royal coat of arms above; discreetly carved in plasterwork is a gold-leaf straw-carrying roof thatcher. The White State Drawing Room contains Corinthian columns, ornate Baroque-style central ceiling mouldings and corner mouldings showing the four national flowers. It was used by Edward Heath as a music room.
The Terracotta State Drawing Room. Most of the room, including the overmantle bearing the royal arms, was remodelled in the 1980s by Quinlan Terry.
The State Dining Room was built in 1827, and Sir John Soane excelled himself by designing a spacious chamber of oak panelling and reeded mouldings, where the vaulted arched ceiling rises to the second floor of the house. The Cabinet Room, all but unchanged over two centuries, is furnished with a coffin-shaped table, put in by Macmillan for a clear view of his ministers, and chairs used by Gladstone and Disraeli, while the grand triple staircase, lined with pictures of ex-PMs, sports a wrought-iron balustrade embellished with a scroll design and mahogany handrail. If Wilson, Thatcher and Brown used the study to work, Churchill preferred it for snoozing. Larry the Downing Steet cat is often in attendance, ever vigilant. If Campbell-Bannerman breathed his last in Number 10 muttering, ‘This is not the end for me’, this old terraced house – swiftly built and subject to subsidence, bomb damage and mortar attack, and threatened more than once with demolition – has, to date, survived all its Prime Ministers.
The State Dining Room, designed by Sir John Soane in 1827.
