An unexpected invitation to Downing Street yesterday. A few privileged people working there could ask friends and family and show them round.
It is almost compulsory to be photographed outside the door and many succumbed. Larry the cat (bottom left) has seen it all before and looked the other way. A long-suffering security guard is inside watching on TV so that he can open the door on the first knock. I’d always wondered how that happens – it was impressive that it was done for us tourists as carefully as for Heads of State.
The cul-de-sac got its name from Sir George Downing who is a piece of work. He went to Harvard – the second ever graduate of the then new university. He had been born in England and popped back to take advantage of the Civil War. He was Cromwell’s Scoutmaster General. He was not a Baden-Powell in shorts; he ran the Secret Service. The Restoration put him in a delicate position. While some subsequent Harvard graduates have been honourable, Downing was a hornswoggler. He double-crossed Cromwell and betrayed his former friends to torture and death. Pepys, who also ran with the hounds and hunted with the hare, called him a perfidious rogue and a doubly perjured traitor. Harvard have been wise to forget their student. Cambridge isn’t so lucky: Downing College.
Downing eventually got his hands on his eponymous street and built houses “fit for persons of honour and quality”. Developers in London today have the same aspiration and may end up in the same way. Downing’s houses were gimcrack; some were residential but two were public houses and more brothels. Like the early developers in Docklands, Downing made no money from his speculation; but like them he chose the right location.
George II bought Downing House (No 10 today) and gave it to Robert Walpole who had profited much too much as Britain’s first Prime Minister to want such a lowly dwelling. He acquired Old Masters from all over Europe and built Houghton to house them. However, thoughtfully, he accepted No 10 as a residence for future holders of his office. Well, his generosity was not all it seemed. The property belonged to the nation and the nation’s taxpayers had to pay for the extensive and expensive renovation that Walpole commissioned William Kent to execute. ‘Twas ever thus.
Oh dear, I haven’t even got through the front door. But before I do I should mention that an early front door from No 10 is still in use at Downing College, Cambridge.