SYMBOL OF BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 125, 22 November 1935, Page 15

SYMBOL OF BRITAIN

NO. 10 DOWNING STREET

TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD

GIFT FEOH THE KING

(By "Senex.")

A few weeks ago there occurred a bicentenary which would have re- f 1 ceived more attention had it not been for the disturbing events which were absorbing the statesmen and public of ' Britain. It was merely the anniversary of a man moving, it to a house, but the w, man was Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of England, and the house was the brick-faced, railed dwelling which pi is No. 10 Downing Street. *h This house, which is the most '. famous dwelling in the world, was built by a man who was born in Ire- fr land, educated in America, and lived is in England, where he turned from p1 parson to spy (or scout) for Cromwell st and then, it is said, betrayed his old cc Puritan colleagues in order to capture th the good will of Charles I. Whatever *■" the reason, George Downing, con- m veniently able to blame his Puritan C c leanings upon the misleading teach- g( ings he had heard in New England, st finally made such progress in the vv good graces of the Merry Monarch di that he received as a reward for his as services the right to build upon some it Jand which Charles had leased in sc "Whitehall. This land was "over against the Cockpit" and Charles took io it up in 1677. Before Downing died a< nine years later a street had been g] formed and named after him. In 1731 Si what was Jcnown as The King's House, at the back portion of the present build- \v ing, lost its tenant, Count Bothmar, to c< whom it had been assigned for life V, because of his services to the House of tc Hanover during its quest of the 6( English throne. s« FOR THE FIRST LORD. When this event occurred King George II offered the house to Sir Robert Walpole, but the Prime MTnister^ unwilling to accept favours which might be misconstrued by his opponents, declared that he would occupy the house only if it were made over for the' permanent use of the First Lord of the Treasury. So the house was assigned by the King for this purpose; not as the residence of the Prime Minister, but as that of the First Treasury Lord, an office which the Prime Minister usually holds. Twice during one decade, however, the Prime Minister did not fill the post at the Treasury, and on these occasions the house was occupied first by Mr. W. H. Smith and later by Mr. Stafford Northcote. It will be seen that the famous No. 10 was available for residence four years [before Walpole moved in. What was j Ihe reason for this delay? The answer ;has been given only this year, and it { is this: next door to the old No. 10 j there was, another house. It needed I only the removal of a wall to make I the two houses one. In 1734, according to the evidence of the rate books of the City of Westminster, the tenant of what is now the front portion of No. 10 moved to a place further down the street. After this gentleman (a Mr. Chicken) had gone, Walpole obtained permission from the King to convert the two houses into one. When this had been done No. 10 was a vastly more desirable place in which to live, and he moved in there on September 22, 1735. A few days later the Queen and her daughters had breakfast with Sir Robert, the first of many official visits to the house, and the three .sons of Sir Robert waited at table on the Royal Family. It is recorded that on departing the Queen "left a handsome sum to be distributed among the servants." HOME OF CHANCELLORS. After the departure of Walpole from the place in 1741, No. 10 was the home of Chancellors of the Exchequer, or of relatives of the Prime Minister, for almost a generation. It was not until 1825 that the Chancellor of the Exchequer received a house of his own— No. 11 Downing Street. In 1767 Lord North, the Prime Minister who was j largely responsible for the loss of the I American colonies, lived in the house, I and it was there that the fatal deI cisions which led to conflict were I made. Since 1735 the house has had I thirty-one tenants; ' fourteen of them j have been Prime Ministers. For the last century and a half the Cabinet has met there, and not only the home but the office of the Prime Minister has been within those walls. On the ground floor and first floor there are twenty principal rooms. All the rooms on the ground floor and those in the basement have been devoted to business, but there remains ample space for expansion, a furious thing in an age when officialdom so quickly outgrows its accommodation in other fields. The house is rambling and confusing; it is so large that a meeting may be taking place at one end of it without the people at the other suspecting anything unusual being afoot; rooms and passages are gloomy in the extreme. Less than twenty years ago—until Mr. Asquith went to live there in 1908—there was not even a bathroom in the house. There used to be a rather curious method of lighting and heating the place. For the heating and lighting _ of the private rooms the Prime Mm/- , ister was responsible. For the light ;> and heat in other rooms the Office of Works bore the charges. Today that cumbrous system has ended' and the Prime Minister receives an allowance : of £200 a year to care for the whole s of the premises. But apart from its i convenient site in the very heart of the. * legislative area, it is not a house which { any man would inhabit from choice. s Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald, in fact, con- | ceived a dislike for it, and whenever " the House was not in session he re--1 mained as much as possible at his I own home in Hampstead, going down f to The Chequers, the official country X home of the Prime Minister, for the jj weekends. I But even though the house falls I short of modern standards of what is I desirable, no one in England would contemplate replacing No. 10. To the people of England the house is the home of history and reconstruction of it is unthinkable. It will be inhabited by Prime Ministers as long as it is inhabitable, and after that it will be turned into a sort of political and historical museum. It is unlikely, of course, that the dwelling will ever again approach the situation it attained when the first tenant moved in to the rear portion, for this tenant, who was the Earl of Lichfield, had eighteen children. It is not likely that there : will ever be a repetition of the hapIpening of a century ago when a madman seeking Sir Robert Peel met and killed Edward Drummond, the secretary of the Prime Minister, by mistake. But there are still eventful days at No. 10; its walls still give the impression of absorbing history and in its .solidity, its persistence in an era of change, its quiet assimilation, of modern influences without losing its essential character, it appears the very symbol of England and of the English people.

A world record is claimed for six Soviet women who recently arrived in Mwi:inv niter covering 2">PO miles on bk-vdes hi :H days.