Prime Ministerial Residences in History

View of Chatsworth from the south west after the Bachelor Duke's alterations. The north wing, culuminating in the Belvedere Tower, is on the left. The stables peep out from behind the house and the Hunting Tower can be seen in Stand Wood. Public domain, via Wikipedia Commons.

View of Chatsworth from the south west after the Bachelor Duke's alterations.

View of Chatsworth from the south west after the Bachelor Duke's alterations. The north wing, culuminating in the Belvedere Tower, is on the left. The stables peep out from behind the house and the Hunting Tower can be seen in Stand Wood. Public domain, via Wikipedia Commons.

Introduction

10 Downing Street is the most famous address in the world. It has been the scene of the most important decisions ever taken in Britain, and witnesses history every day. Likewise, the Prime Minister’s country retreat, Chequers has been used for summits, meetings, and crucial decision making. But, for two centuries, Prime Ministers had no access to Chequers, and often chose to live outside of Number 10 even when in London. This article looks at a few places that have witnessed Prime Ministerial history.


The Country House

Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England.
Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England. Credit: Stuart Aylmer / Alamy Stock Photo

The Prime Ministers of the 18th and 19th Century were much more likely to be aristocratic than modern ones. Many sat in the House of Lords and through inheritance or marriage had considerable estates and a large country house (or even several).  Most had a property in London for political business, and then a house in the countryside that sat on their own land. Moreover, until the mid-20th Century, the Parliamentary session often ended in August, and then did not recommence until the New Year, meaning that the Prime Minister would often have long periods when they did not need to be in London.

The first Prime Ministerial stately home, even before Downing Street, was Houghton Hall in Norfolk. The first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42), had the house constructed on his Norfolk estate. It is one of the country’s greatest examples of Palladian architecture, and was designed by some of the era’s most prominent architects, including Thomas Ripley and William Kent.

Walpole’s great art collection, one of the finest in Europe, lined the walls, with paintings on display by William Hogarth, Johann Rottenhammer, and Sir Anthony Van Dyck. His son, Horace Walpole, wrote that one of Walpole’s agents had bought a fine painting in Rome, but Pope Innocent XIII had ‘remanded it back, as being too fine to let go’. However, ‘upon hearing who had bought it’, the Pope relented and allowed it to be shipped to Walpole. Today, much of the collection lives on in the Hermitage in St Petersburg, sold by one of Walpole’s descendants.

But Houghton was not just an art gallery. It formed a crucial part of Walpole’s political operation. Every May and November, it became the venue for his ‘Norfolk Congress’. These were raucous parties for the Whig elite. One guest wrote about how ‘we used to sit down to dinner a snug little party of about thirty odd, up to the chin in beef, venison, geese, turkeys … claret, strong beer and punch.’ He added that ‘In public we drank loyal healths, talked of the times and cultivated popularity; in private we drew plans and cultivated the country.’

Many of the aristocratic Prime Ministers of the 18th and 19th Centuries possessed a stately home. Chatsworth in Derbyshire, one of Britain’s most famous stately homes, was owned by the Duke of Devonshire (1756-57). Nearby, Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire, which is considered the largest private home in the UK, was owned by Lord Rockingham (1765-66, 1782).

Of course, the stately home was also a more practical symbol of power, particularly before the Reform Act of 1832. The Duke of Newcastle (1754-56, 1757-62) owned many houses, including Clumber Park and Nottingham Castle. These were parts of a vast inheritance from both his father and his uncle, which left him considerable lands, wealth, and direct control over some 20 constituencies, mostly ‘rotten’ and ‘pocket’ boroughs.

A century later, as Benjamin Disraeli (1868, 1874-80) rose up the ranks of the Conservative Party, he purchased Hughenden in Buckinghamshire. As a key figure in a party that represented traditional English values, and a landowning elite, the ownership of such a house showed that Disraeli had a stake in the country, and it gave him considerable status. Though not a natural rural gentleman (he eschewed the traditional pursuits of shooting and hunting) he did enjoy walking in the countryside, and welcomed the respite that Hughenden provided. Today, Hughenden remains dedicated to Disraeli’s memory, and visitors can see the ceremonial robe of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which Disraeli took home with him, much to the chagrin of his successor, William Gladstone (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94).

Appropriately, the last great aristocrat to be Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury (1885-86, 1885-92, 1895-1902), was born and died at his great stately home of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire. Hatfield had been constructed during the 1600s, by Robert Cecil, who had been chief minister to King James I.

View of Chatsworth from the south west after the Bachelor Duke's alterations.
View of Chatsworth from the south west after the Bachelor Duke’s alterations. The north wing, culuminating in the Belvedere Tower, is on the left. The stables peep out from behind the house and the Hunting Tower can be seen in Stand Wood. Public domain, via Wikipedia Commons.

The Town

Political life in London meant living there, and between the onset of the year (calendar and Parliamentary) and August, the Prime Minister would be located in Westminster or nearby.

Fife House was fairly typical of the large mansions that Prime Ministers tended to use. It had been built during the 18th Century near the River Thames on ground that was once a part of Whitehall Palace. Lord Liverpool (1812-27) took a lease on the property in 1809 and when he became Prime Minister in 1812, he remained at Fife House, and did not move to Downing Street. Consequently, the centre of the British government became Fife House. It was there that he met ministers, and where, with his Cabinet, he awaited the news that the Cato Street conspirators had been apprehended in February 1820. For all its history, Fife House was not particularly valued. The lease was sold a few times after Liverpool’s death in 1828, and it became the India Museum during the 1860s. It was demolished in 1869, with the area now covered by the Ministry of Defence building.

Fife House may not be available to visit anymore, but the home of another Prime Minister certainly is. Apsley House, grandly, if now inaccurately, titled ‘Number One London’, was the home of the Duke of Wellington (1828-30, 1834) and is located near Hyde Park Corner. It houses the Duke’s magnificent collection of art, including paintings by Caravaggio, van Dyck, Goya, and Velazquez, many of them gifts by the grateful Spanish royal family for his victories during the Napoleonic Wars. There is also a 3.4 metre nude statue of Wellington’s vanquished enemy Napoleon standing just below the main staircase, and a dinner service that Napoleon gifted to Josephine as a divorce gift (she did not accept it).

The Duke’s opposition to the cause of Parliamentary reform caused a mob to smash his windows at Apsley in April and October 1831. Ever practical, the Duke affixed iron shutters to his windows to ensure they remained intact. It has been suggested that this little incident was origin of his ‘Iron Duke’ nickname (though this has been disputed). Apsley House is run by English Heritage and can be visited, though the iron shutters have long since been removed.

View from the River Thames of Whitehall Stairs.
View from the River Thames of Whitehall Stairs, with trees in walled garden to right and a grand house on the left; a number of small boats by the stairs in the water. 1831. © The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The 20th Century

With the dawn of the 20th Century, the great aristocrats receded from the premiership.

The final great country house that was owned by a Prime Minister was Chartwell, which was the home of Winston Churchill (1940-45, 1951-55). He had bought Chartwell in Kent in 1922 and lived there for forty years. It would consume his attention, and the renovations would reduce his bank balance, for over a decade. During the 1930s, he would meet with anti-appeasement colleagues here, though during the war, it was rarely used because the house’s prominence was thought to be vulnerable to air attack. In June 1953, in the midst of a terrible stroke, Churchill retreated to Chartwell, away from the public eye, to recover his strength.

View of Chartwell House
Chartwell House. © Jonathan Meakin

A small role in history was also played by Birch Grove, Harold Macmillan’s (1957-63) home in West Sussex. Macmillan disliked Chequers, and preferred to entertain at his own property. There, he met foreign leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nikita Khruschev, John F. Kennedy, and Charles de Gaulle. Famously, de Gaulle, who was under constant threat of assassination from OAS terrorists, always travelled with a fridge full of compatible blood, which had to be stored in an outhouse. Macmillan wrote in his diary ‘The house is looking lovely. [De Gaulle’s] blood plasma is in a special refrigerator in the coach house. Police (with and without dogs) are in the garden and in the woods (one Alsatian happily bit the Daily Mail man in the behind). Altogether a most enjoyable show’.

Macmillan was one of the last two Prime Ministers not to live at Number 10 for substantial periods of their premierships, the other being Harold Wilson (1964-70, 1974-76). Macmillan had to move out of Number 10 during the restoration of the 1960s and used Admiralty House instead. He preferred Admiralty House, which he found to be much grander than Number 10. It was from there that he spoke to John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

A decade and a half later, Harold Wilson, who had returned to power in 1974, chose to continue living at his flat in Lord North Street near Parliament, rather than live at Number 10. His wife Mary Wilson had hated living in Number 10 during Wilson’s first term (1964-70), comparing it to a ‘goldfish bowl’. Consequently, Wilson commuted to Number 10 during his short second period as Prime Minister

Since the onset of the 20th Century, Prime Ministerial abodes have become more modest; they usually have had a home near their constituency, but after Lord Salisbury, they have all lived at Downing Street (even if Wilson did not during his second term). The aristocratic country house was replaced by Chequers as an official residence where the Prime Minister could conduct business.

Resources

Books:

  • Jack Brown, No. 10: The Geography of Power at Downing Street (London, 2019).
  • Stefan Buczacki, Churchill and Chartwell: The Untold Story of Churchill’s Houses and Gardens, (London, 2007).
  • Norman Gash, Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 1770-1828, (London, 2016).
  • Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, (London, 2001).
  • Harold Macmillan, Peter Catterall (ed.). The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II: Prime Minister and After 1957-1966 (London, 2004).
  • Andrew Moore (ed.), Houghton Hall: The Prime Minister, the Empress and the Heritage (London, 2001).
  • Andrew Moore, ‘Sir Robert Walpole: The Prime Minister as Collector’.- John Harris, ‘The Architecture of the House’- H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The King’s Minister (London, 1960).
  • Sally Stafford, Disraeli and Hughenden, (2010).

Websites:

  • ‘Apsley House’, English Heritage, <http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/apsley-house/>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • ‘Chartwell’, National Trust, <https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/kent/chartwell>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • G. H. Gater, E. P. Wheeler, (ed.) Survey of London: Volume 16, St Martin-in-The-Fields I: Charing Cross, (London, 1935). British History Online, <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol16/pt1/pp165-192>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • ‘History: 10 Downing Street’, Gov.uk, <https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street>, 11 October 2023.
  • ‘History’, Houghton Hall, <https://www.houghtonhall.com/history/>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • ‘Hughenden’, National Trust, <https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/oxfordshire-buckinghamshire-berkshire/hughenden>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • Kathryn Kane, ‘The Iron Duke was not at Waterloo’, The Regency Redingote, 1 January 2010, <https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/the-iron-duke-was-not-at-waterloo/>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • John W Scadding, J. Allister Vale, ‘Winston Churchill’s acute stroke in June 1953’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, October 2018, pp. 347–358, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6194955/>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • Ian Toplis, ‘The Building of the Foreign and India Offices’, The Scott Dynasty, c.2018, <https://gilbertscott.org/the-building-of-the-foreign-and-india-offices/>, accessed 11 October 2023.
  • ‘18th Century’, Chatsworth, <https://www.chatsworth.org/visit-chatsworth/chatsworth-estate/history-of-chatsworth/18th-century>, accessed 11 October 2023.

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