10 Downing Street is much larger than it looks from the front. There are dozens and dozens of rooms and apartments. For a virtual tour, go to www.number-10.gov.uk
The large houses behind Downing Street have been joined to 10 Downing St to make a much larger building.
The Prime Minister also lives at Chequers, which is a 1300 acre estate in the country.
Officially Tony Blair lives in no. 10 and Gordon Brown, the chancellor, live in no. 11, but because Tony Blair’s family is bigger than Gordon Browns, they swapped apartments.
MODERATOR NOTE: This thread was from 2006, has been revived now that the column is re-run as a “classic.” – CKDH
10 Downing Street is much larger than it looks from the front. There are dozens and dozens of rooms and apartments. For a virtual tour, go to www.number-10.gov.uk
The large houses behind Downing Street have been joined to 10 Downing St to make a much larger building.
The Prime Minister also lives at Chequers, which is a 1300 acre estate in the country.
Officially Tony Blair lives in no. 10 and Gordon Brown, the chancellor, live in no. 11, but because Tony Blair’s family is bigger than Gordon Browns, they swapped apartments.
It is not just an American thing to have odd numbers on one side of the street and evens on the other, we have that here in Australia. And I’m pretty sure they generally do in the UK too, just not so much in one unusual dead end street.
Absolutely - odds on one side, evens on the other is more likely than not in the UK, even in normal cul de sacs/no through roads (not dead end streets formally). There are exceptions, of course.
It’s more a question of antique/recent than of British/American. But, of course, Britain is more likely to be antique in any given instance. Early numbering could be as crude as simply assigning #1 to the first house built on the street, #2 to the next, and so forth.
First, it is standard in the UK too to have odd numbers on one side and even on the other. Downing St is an exception in that it was a private road and even today there are only 3 houses.
Number 10 is an amalgamation of 3 buildings one of which was a full blown mansion. There are over 100 rooms including a residential flat, restaurant sized commercial kitchen and many offices, reception rooms and dining rooms. Rooms go from informal places for colleagues to top formal for presidents and monarchs. There is a half acre garden and an interior courtyard. It is very far from a two up two down tenement!
Of course it isn’t as grand as the White House or a palace, but is still grand enough for a head of government.
Nice update that one. The only story I know about the plaque “First Lord of the Treasury” was that the position automatically went to the prime minister. This was mentioned by Churchill’s valet in his book “My Years with Churchill.” He said Americans liked to get their facts straight (really? ) and they seemed to like the explanation, confirming their notion that Brits like to stick to tradition in many things.
Until the 60s or early 70s one could walk right up to the door of 10, Downing St, pose for photos outside, sometimes there was a bobby there, often there wasn’t. I remember taking my kids up and having to move the pushchair when the door opened and someone came out (not the PM, alas).
Interesting. When were those drawn? Where would the famous doorway be in those plans - in the lower right corner somewhere, along the bottom edge of what is marked “Library” or “The Dining Room”? Actually, I see that that’s labeled the “First Floor Plan,” so the doorway would be on the ground floor, I suppose.
The door would be below the unlabelled hall room to the left of the Library (yes - ‘first floor’ is the floor above ground floor in UK terminology) - you can sort of work it out by comparing the position of windows on that plan with an image of the front elevation of the building - such as this one
That’s the first floor plan from the Survey of London volume, which was published in 1931. The plans for the other floors can be found here and here. Despite the later rebuilding work, those are probably still best available plans. The configuration of the main rooms remains the same. A point I can confirm from personal experience.
I thought there was a mansion as part of 10 Downing Street. The House in Back. You can see it in the middle of this Google Map shot. Downing Street is on the bottom with the entrance to 10 Downing Street in the middle. You see what looks like a row of houses. Behind that is either an L shaped building making a courtyard, or an addition. That’s connected to a large mansion like house behind that which is connected to the buildings on Whitehall Street.
Or, is that building part of the Treasury building now?
By ‘L shaped building’, I’m assuming you mean the building with the darker, more reddish roof immediately behind the range fronting Downing Street. The one with the garden to the north and west. That’s the bit of No 10 that’s the grander house that has since been combined with the more-famous terrace house. It’s the bit that contained the Prime Minister’s Bedroom, the Dressing Room, the Boudoir, the Small Drawing Room and the Official Drawing Room on the Survey of London plan of the first floor.
The large block (‘mansion’?) to the east, connected to No 10 and adjacent to Horse Guards Parade, is the Treasury Block, built by William Kent to house the Treasury in the 1730s. That is then connected to the Old Treasury, which faces Whitehall. Those are what the Survey of London calls the Treasury Buildings. It has plans for those as well, including this one of the first floor. However, those buildings are now mostly occupied by the Cabinet Office, with the Treasury having moved to the New Government Offices on Parliament Square.
) and they seemed to like the explanation, confirming their notion that Brits like to stick to tradition in many things.
