Office Of The Prime Minister history

During the Napoleonic wars the support team for the first minister was substantially restructured, including in 1805 the creation of the role of Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, a forerunner to the Whitehall departmental Permanent Secretary.

In 1828, Number 11 became the Chancellor of the Exchequer's official residence, but the surrounding area was becoming seedier, with brothels and gin parlours multiplying.

Things became so bad that by 1839 there were plans to demolish Number 10 and the other buildings on the north side of Downing Street to make way for a remodelled Whitehall.

In 1841 a former Prime Minister, Viscount Melbourne, explained the above to Queen Victoria.

One Prime Minister’s secretary, Edward Drummond, inadvertently performed the ultimate service when an assassin mistook him for Sir Robert Peel in 1843.

1870: the Prime Minister acquires the sole right to call Cabinet meetings;

In 1878 William Gladstone – who served as Prime Minister on four separate occasions – remarked:

When William Gladstone moved into the house for the first time in 1880, he insisted on redecorating, spending £1,555.5s.0d – an enormous sum for the time – on furniture.

1881: ‘Questions to the PM’ are introduced in Parliament, an ancestor of today’s weekly ‘Prime Minister’s Questions’;

During his occupancy in 1884, electric lighting was fitted and the first telephones were installed.

The list of government ministers printed in Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates, seems to have first used the title Prime Minister in 1885.

In 1899 the former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery wrote that

An early internal reference to the Prime Minister was included in the minutes of the first meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1902.

1903: The establishment of the Prime Minister’s absolute right to remove ministers from office; and

In 1912, Herbert Henry Asquith found himself at odds with Ulster and the Tory opposition following renewed attempts to introduce Irish Home Rule.

Asquith had been forced to take on the additional role of Secretary of State for War following the resignation of the incumbent in March 1914, but quickly appointed Lord Kitchener following the outbreak of war.

Asquith remained leader of the coalition until his resignation on 5 December 1916.

The first statutory reference to the Prime Minister came in the Chequers Estate Act 1917, which specified Chequers as a prime-ministerial residence.

When armistice was finally declared on 11 November 1918, crowds thronged Downing Street chanting ‘LG’. Lloyd George made an appearance at one of the first floor windows to acknowledge them.

Though some of Lloyd George’s methods fell into disrepute after he left office in 1922, his use of aides in wartime proved influential.

Central heating was installed in 1937 and work began to convert the labyrinth of rooms in the attic, which had formerly been used by servants, into a flat for the Prime Minister.

On 12 September 1938, thousands gathered at Downing Street to listen to Hitler's speech on the final night of the Nuremberg Rally, convinced Britain stood on the brink of war.

But over the following 12 months tension did not lift, and on 3 September 1939, Chamberlain broadcast to the nation from the Cabinet Room at Number 10, announcing that the country was now at war with Germany.

By October 1940, the intense bombing period known as the Blitz began.

As soon as war was over, Churchill and his wife moved back to Number 10, where he made his Victory in Europe (VE) Day broadcast, which was delivered from the Cabinet Room at 3pm on 8 May 1945.

In 1974 Robert (Lord) Blake, Oxford academic and biographer of Benjamin Disraeli, identified three ‘turning points’ in the history of the premiership.

In 1976 the former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, reflected that few premiers “except in wartime and rarely then, could dictate to their Cabinets.” unless they consulted with senior ministers.

Public recognition of the existence of a ‘Prime Minister’s Office’ in the Civil Service Yearbook came as recently as the 1977 edition.

On 19 March 1982, the Argentinian flag was raised by a group of scrap metal merchants on the island of South Georgia, a British overseas territory and dependant of the Falkland Islands.

1983 – wider roll-out of computers machines for Number 10 staff following a review of the building's needs.

1996 – the launch of the first No10 website.

By 2006, it was clear that the Downing Street complex was no longer able to support the business of the Prime Minister's Office reliably.

2008 – Number 10's first tweet – and there have been over 3,000 since.

Rainwater harvesting was introduced in 2009, providing a sustainable source of water for the garden.

Andrew Blick and George Jones, Premiership: the development, nature and power of the office of the British Prime Minister (Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2010)