Downing Street is a cul-de-sac off Whitehall, and Number 10 is the most famous front door in Britain. From outside it looks like a modest Georgian terraced house. It is not.
Bigger inside
Number 10 is three buildings joined together — the terraced house at the front, a far larger mansion behind it, and connections through into Numbers 11 and 12. There are over a hundred rooms, several staircases, a warren of offices, a Cabinet Room, state rooms for entertaining, and a garden.
The famous staircase is lined with portraits of every previous prime minister, and they are shuffled along each time a new one is added, so the current occupant walks past their predecessors every day.
The door
Black, with a white “10” whose zero is set at a slight angle — an old signwriter’s error preserved deliberately ever since. There is no keyhole and it cannot be opened from outside. Someone is always on duty inside to open it, which is why arriving ministers stand on the step for a moment.
The original door was made of oak. It was replaced with blast-proof steel after the IRA mortar attack on the street in 1991, and the steel version is so heavy it takes eight men to lift. Two exist, so one can be refurbished while the other is in place.
The gates
Until 1989 anyone could walk down Downing Street, and photographs from the period show tourists standing beside the door. Margaret Thatcher had the security gates installed at the Whitehall end in response to the IRA threat, and the street has been closed to the public ever since. You can now see the gates and very little else.
Who lives where
- Number 10 — the Prime Minister.
- Number 11 — the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who traditionally poses outside with the red Budget Box on Budget day.
- Number 12 — the government whips, who manage party discipline.
The flats are connected, and prime ministers with larger families have sometimes swapped with the Chancellor for the bigger apartment above Number 11.
George Downing
The street is named after Sir George Downing, a 17th-century diplomat, spy and property developer who built it in the 1680s. He was, by contemporary accounts, thoroughly disliked — he betrayed former colleagues to secure his own position after the Restoration — and the houses he put up were cheaply built on soft ground, which is why they have needed near-constant structural work ever since.
Larry
The Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is a genuine official position, and Larry the cat has held it since 2011, outlasting six prime ministers. He belongs to the household rather than to any individual PM, and has his own considerable following.