10, DOWNING STREET

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 30 July 1929, Page 2

10, DOWNING STREET

PRIME MINISTER'S HOUSE ITS VARYING POPULARITY It was moving time last month in the Ministerial residences in and around Whitehall. The official homes of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the. First Lord of the Admiralty are subject to. all the uncertainties of party government. Homes as well as seals pass from Minister to Minister on a change of Government. But whereas the members of the late Administration are definitely moving out, the members of the new Ministry are not so certainly moving in. Office has charms, but not always has the official residence. i If Mr .MacDonald, who is .known to have been loth to leave his favourite Hampstead, had chosen not to become an actual resident of Downing Street, it would not have been tho first time in its 200 years' association with the great servants of State that the famous house had given an office, but not a home, to its tenant. Despite its traditions No. 10 has made a varying appeal to successive Prime Ministers. Some of them, maybe, had an objection to spending part of their i life in a place which once was the home of George Downing, the "perfidious rogue" (such was the verdict of Pepys, and he w;as a good judge of rogues). A LEGACY FROM WALPOLE Perhaps it is a reproach for a house to have to own for its builder that political Vicar of Bray who sided so successfully with all times and changes, gaining place and profit under Cromwell and Charles 11. It is to Walpole"s scruples that our Prime Ministers are indebted for theh\ Loudon home. Sir Robert was offered the place for his own, but as a gesture of independence he declined to accept it, and George I. could only prevail upon him to receive the gift as official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury. l To that post Downing's house has been annexed ever since. Sir Robert, • when at last he condescended to move in, found the place to his liking, and ho occupied it almost continuously throughout his long period of office. In this he was like Bute and' North. Pitt the Elder, on the other hand, was not much enamoured of the place, though his son was altogether of the other way of thinking. In all his years of office William Pitt would not sleep away from it unless compelled by the strongest reasons. Lord Grey (Reform Bill Grey) made the house his home. Those .two opponents of the dawn of Victoria's reign, Viscount Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel, were agreed in using No. 10 -for official purposes only. Lord Beaconsfield was, perhaps, the most devoted of modern occupants of the house, and he expended several thousands of pounds on. carrying out an elaborate scheme of decoration. There was less sentiment about Gladstone's regard. He found No. 10 very, convenient for the despatch of business. Lord Salisbury never entered No 10 as a tenant. THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR No. 11 cannot boast of quite so .long: a connection with affairs of State as its neighbour, although it, too., has to own to the creation of Downing. Sir George was granted the land by Charles ll.—his perfidy must have been accomplished,.for it 'was within three years of the Restoration that Cromwell's ex-Ambassador received the-signal mark of royal favour —with the stipulation that the house he was to erect was to be "handsome and graceful." He was not content to build one house, but only two of his several structures survive. At the beginning of the last century there was no other official residence in; TTowning Street but No. .10. By degreesone house was bought after another —first the Foreign Office, then, the Colonial Office, and then a house for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. . Many of the occupants of .No. 11 have made their way to the house next door. Perhaps among any men living the closest recollections of the two houses will be enjoyed by Viscount Gladstone, who was born at No. 11, and who must have spent considerable periods in the neighbouring building during the four terms of his father's Premiership. The tenant of Admiralty House, unlike his colleagues of Downing Street, has to pay for his tenancy. The rent is deducted from the First Lord's salary.