NO. 10, DOWNING STREET

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 149, 27 June 1925, Page 16

NO. 10, DOWNING STREET

ANNEXED BY THE CROWN WHEN

JAMES 11. FLED

; Time, the devourer, has not been so severe upon 10 Downing street as rumour declared.: The Office of Works has retorted 1 boldly that the old house will stand for another hundred years yet., Thero had not long been a Downing street, says .the "Daily . Telegraph," when/the house became the official home of the First Lord of the Treasury. It was called after tho Secretary to the Treasury of. : those days, Sir George Downing. When James 11. ran away A'o.: 10 belonged to his Master of the Horse, who went with/him, and it was forfeit to the Crown. George 11. offered it to. Sir : Robert Walpole, who "might have-, had it for his own, but would only take it. as First Lord of the Treasury," and persuaded the King to "annex it for ever " to that office. .:

"Since his day most Prime Ministers have used it. - Pitt kept house there for years in a style-'which'bewildered his iriends. He was famous for "the perspicuity and rapidity " of his dealing with accounts. But he did not apply these qualities to his domestic finance, and fe tradesmen's books were stupendous. Oan it be possible," one of his friends protests,•■" that 38001b.0f meat could be dressed in 28 days. , On. a Saturday there is. generally 3cwt .or 4cwt." Such aro the _ misfortunes of a bachelor Primo Minister, which may be the reason -why the creature is .rare.

Pitt'was probably the most devoted to JNo. 10 of all its inhabitants. Other places irked him. He would not have understood how Peel .and .." Melbourne could prefer to live somewhere else',, and Disraeli keep ..on a house in. Whitehall Gardens when Downing street waited for him. The ' Prime Ministers of our x^ n I tVne;i liave; indeed been faithful to -JNo.-.-10. But even when a Premier has used it. only as an office, -. or,. possessing a department of. his own, not even as that, it .has ■ generally been the meeting place of Cabinets: -' *.; •.'■■...-.'- '■'-■..