World: Back Home at No. 10

Ending a three-year absence from their official residence, Prime Minister Macmillan and Lady Dorothy moved back into No. 10 Downing Street last week. But if their new tenure was uncertain, there was no mistaking the uproar over the remodeling project—one of the bureaucratic epics of modern British history.

Home for British Prime Ministers since 1735, No. 10 Downing has never been anyone’s dream house. Jerry-built half a century earlier as a private residence by a Harvard-educated speculator, Sir George Downing, the Whitehall relic, four stories high, so depressed Melbourne that he refused to set foot in it. Haughty Margot Asquith called it “squalid,” Lloyd George’s wife would not move in until adequate plumbing was installed. During the blitz, Churchill complained that it was “shaky.” One ancient boiler heated both Nos. 10 and 11, residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, leading then-Chancellor Rab Butler to complain that when Churchill set the thermostat in the 70s or 80s, he, Butler, was being “fried alive.”

In 1958 a parliamentary committee announced that the “full horror” of No. 10 Downing Street had become apparent, warned that the place was so dilapidated that the Macmillans were in imminent danger of crashing through the floor into the old air-raid shelter below. Hurriedly, the occupants moved around the corner to Admiralty House, and a top-to-bottom interior overhaul began on Nos. 10, 11 and 12 (the latter is home for the P.M.’s Party Whip). The initial timetable was two years; the initial cost estimate: $1,100,000.

As workmen peered closer, the horror got worse. Most rooms, it turned out, had to have new ceilings. Ornate 18th century cornices needed tedious repair and cleaning—with 40 coats of paint removed from some. Behind the paneling a two-inch-wide crack was found spreading through the brickwork.

The project turned into a political target for labor leaders, was hit by 14 strikes. Because of haste in starting, the government did not even bother to take overall bids, proceeded on a piecemeal, cost-plus basis.

About the only economies encountered were in furnishings, thanks to Harold and Dorothy Macmillan, hardly the types to let their imaginations run riot. They ordered everything “very plain and simple,” vetoed damask and brocade for the walls, had the bedroom done in chintz. Last week, with the renovation finally finished more than a year behind schedule, the total bill stood at an astronomical $8,500,000.

And judging from the comment, few taxpayers were satisfied. The floors still slant, and the walls still lean as much as ten inches, but Architect Raymond Erith confidently assured everyone: “We’ve hooked it up good and proper and it won’t fall down.”