Today, 3rd April is the 300^th anniversary of the coming to office of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. To commemorate this, we asked our Footprints guides to write about a Prime Minister of their choice who has a connection with a particular London building or buildings they know.

The ten Prime Ministers discussed below have therefore not been chosen on the basis of any of evaluation of their importance or their achievements.  The sense of history possessed by our guides, however, is perhaps highlighted by the fact that only two chose to write about a Prime Minister who served the nation after 1900.

The Prime Ministers are not discussed in any principled order.  However, it is probably appropriate to begin with Robert Walpole, the very first PM, and to finish with Sir Winston Churchill, arguably the most renowned.

Sir Robert Walpole (3rd April 1721 to 11th February 1742), by Dave Brown

Walpole served in George I’s cabinet in 1715 as the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.   During his first two years in office, at a time where corruption was taken for granted, he managed to amass a huge private fortune of £60,000 (over £10m. in today’s money).  By 1720 he was the dominant advisor to the King, and both friends and enemies started to call him ‘the Prime Minister’ – the first consistent use of this title.

In 1737, when offered 10 Downing Street by King George II, he turned it down as a personal residence, but accepted it on behalf of future First Lords of the Treasury (the post usually held by the Prime Minister).  He employed architect William Kent to rebuild 10 Downing Street, merging it with a far larger mansion facing Horse Guards Parade, and making it into the 100 plus room house and office we know today.

He also had a family home at 5 Arlington Street where he died in 1745 (see the blue plaque illustration).  His fortune was largely spent on rebuilding Houghton Hall in Norfolk.  He also spent time at 32 St. James Square, and at his favourite London residence, Orford House (now part of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea), which had extensive gardens overlooking the Thames.  After his resignation from office in 1742, he took the title Earl of Orford.

Earl of Shelburne (4th July 1782 to 26th March 1783), by Michael Duncan

The Landsdowne Club just off Berkeley Square gives little sign of its distinguished past from the outside. Theclub you see now is what’s left of Landsdowne House after its entire east wing was demolished to make way for a road connecting Berkeley Square and Curzon Street.

It is a great club with one of the best pools in London butit  cannot compare to the original house, whose first architect was Robert Adam.

Three British Prime Ministers have links with it.  The Earl of Bute commissioned it but sold it within a year to the Earl of Shelburne, one of those Prime Ministers who is often described as ‘now largely forgotten’. More than a century later, Lord Rosebery also made it his home.

Shelburne was Prime Minister towards the end of the American War of Independence.  Most contemporaries thought him slippery, devious, at times obsequious, and almost always unreliable.  But his opposition to independence made him George III’s choice. But when the facts changed, he changed his mind.

Shelburne went from opposition to acceptance, brokering what many saw as an extremely generous deal with the rebels, granting them huge areas of extra territory.

Why did he do this?  Well, he was an early free marketeer. By granting more territory he hoped America would expand and thrive and so provide a growing market for British goods. But his generosity brought down his short-lived administration.

Five months later in September 1783 the facts had stubbornly refused to change and his deal, ‘The Paris Peace’, was signed. It is quite a legacy, but Shelburne’s unpopularity meant he never saw high office again.

(Michael’s tour “The Americans of Mayfair” explores the links between the USA and this part of London.)

Lord John Russell (30th June 1846 to 21st February 1852; 29th October 1865 to 26th June 1866), by Richard Watkins

In Belgravia’s quiet enclave, to the south west of Belgrave Square, we find 37 Chesham Place,  home of Lord John Russell, a Prime Minister who had two periods of office,  a Liberal aristocrat, and younger brother of the Duke of Bedford, separately raised to the peerage.

He was only five foot 6 inches tall, sharp faced, thin voiced, not a great orator, and it was said no one disliked him, but neither was he liked much.

But he was a genuinely liberal and reforming politician.  He introduced legislation to limit working hours in textile mills in 1847; brought in the Public Health Act 1848 to introduce Health Boards and inspectors of public sanitation – a major step forward in this area.  And as a minister he was greatly involved in repealing religious discrimination laws (the Test Acts).  Unfortunately, however, his administration failed to relieve Irish potato famine victims.

As a minister in Earl Grey’s government in 1831, he introduced the first parliamentary Bill to to expand the male vote.  What was announced in Russell’s monotonal, high pitched whine became incendiary!  It led to protracted debates, dogged Tory resistance, and rioting over its slow progress, leading the Duke of Wellington (a staunch opponent) to erect railings round his windows  – hence ‘The Iron Duke’.

Russell was a fervent advocate of parliamentary reform and the Great Reform Act of 1832 was to lead to successive measures to widen the electoral franchise.

He moved to Chesham Place in 1841 after his second marriage.  His wife said that behind his front door he became a relaxed family man, did not work beyond dinner and spent evenings chatting and laughing with his family.

Spencer Perceval (14th October 1809 to 11th May 1812), by Alan Fortune

The unprepossessing red-brick Perceval House, the Borough of Ealing’s administrative headquarters, is named after a former resident of a manor house near Ealing Common, Spencer Perceval. Perceval is best known for the bloody manner of his removal from office in 1812, and remains the only PM to have been assassinated.  Less well known are the bizarre circumstances in which he attained office.

Perceval was a successful barrister with a keen eye for business who amassed a considerable fortune.  A Tory MP, in 1807 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Duke of Portland’s government  and rapidly acquired a reputation for hard work and efficiency in streamlining the operations of a hitherto chaotic treasury.

He was not among the favourites to succeed the Duke of Portland as PM in 1809.  However, fortune favoured his cause when the two heavyweight contenders, George Canning and Viscount Castlereagh, achieved public ignominy by fighting a duel on Putney Heath in an attempt to settle a quarrel.

In the ensuing three years, Perceval’s grip on the premiership gradually strengthened, mainly because his sound financial stewardship had allowed him to support Sir Arthur Wellesley’s forces in the previously unpopular but increasingly successful Peninsular war campaign.  But on 11 May 1812, he was shot and killed by John Bellingham, a deranged bankrupt businessman with an anti-government grievance, in full public view in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament.

The fact of his assassination is now a regular question in pub quizzes.  It is a shame other parts of his legacy, such as his efforts to combat the illegal slave trade and his adroit handling of the Regency Crisis, are less well known.

Perceval House features in Alan’s tour ‘Ealing: Queen of the Suburbs’.

Robert Gascoyne Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury (23rd June 1885 to 28th January 1886; 25th July 1888 to 11th August 1892; 25th June 1895 to 11th June 1902), by Rhona Levene

“Bob’s Your Uncle” …. is a phrase we are all familiar with.  It’s about nepotism and it’s very much on our minds now as we follow David Cameron’s COVID contracts investigation. 

In the case of three times Prime Minister Robert Cecil, or Uncle Bob, he appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1887.

Cecil became Foreign Secretary in March 1878 to April 1880, June 1885 to February 1886, January 1887 to August 1892 and June 1895 to November 1900.  On 1 April 1878 he challenged the dominance Russia had achieved over Turkey through the Treaty of San Stefano (1877) and subsequently negotiated three separate conventions with Austria, Russia and Turkey, endorsed at the Congress of Berlin in the summer, facilitating, in the words of Disraeli, ‘peace with honour’. From 1885 he combined the offices of both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.  He is the last Prime Minister to serve from the House of Lords.

He is said to have preferred the role of Foreign Secretary even if, at times, the meetings were tedious.  He is said to have jabbed himself with a paper knife under the table to remain awake having to listen to ambassadors and foreign dignitaries.

Would he have been a “remainer?”  In early 1888 he said, “We are part of the community of Europe, and we must do our duty as such”. During his time in office the Empire increased to include Nigeria, New Guinea, Rhodesia, Upper Burma, Zanzibar and the Transvaal. 

A scruffy dresser, he was mistaken for a tramp and refused entrance to the Monte Carlo Casino.  Another time,  when reprimanded by the Prince of Wales for wearing a coat and trousers of different uniforms, he merely said “My apologies but my mind must have been occupied by some subject of less importance”.

Born at the family’s ancestral home, Hatfield House, he also died there on 22 August 1903.

Harold Wilson (10th October 1964 to 19th June 1970; 4th March 1974 to 5th April 1976), by Sean Patterson

Labour leader Harold Wilson was the only prime minister since Churchill to serve non-consecutive terms of office, and was unusual in not residing in Downing Street for his second term. Like another Labour Premier, Tony Blair, he only became Leader of the Opposition upon the death of the incumbent, Hugh Gaitskell, but his tumultuous first term from 1964 to 70 waved in not only the so-named ‘White Heat of Technology’ but also the end of capital punishment, the legalisation of homosexuality and the introduction of equal pay and race relations acts.

In some ways his story is typical of Labour leaders: grammar school scholarship boy excels and goes to Oxbridge before winning a (relatively) local seat and progressing through the ranks. He also retained a sort of common touch with his Gannex raincoats, perpetual pipe and low key holidays on the Scilly Isles. He was perhaps a little like Churchill, keen to control his own image rather than let others do it, even sending himself up in an episode of Morecambe and Wise.

His privately expressed reluctance to take power for a second time in 1974 may explain his decision to remain at his newly acquired house at 5 Lord North Street for that two year term, although his paranoia about MI5 followed him there as he was convinced it was broken into and bugged. Was it colon cancer, Alzheimers or blackmail that caused him to resign his office? We’ll probably never know.

These grand 1722 houses now sell for between four and six million pounds. It may have been an inauspicious address for Wilson as Lord North was Prime minister when Britain lost north America to the rebels.

Earl of Rosebery (5th March 1894 to 22nd June 1895), by Anthony Davis

Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery and first Earl of Midlothian, was not a ‘Top ten’ Prime Minister because of his achievements. His 15 months in office (succeeding Gladstone) were mostly spent warring ineffectually with his cabinet (he did not speak to William Harcourt, the Chancellor, for six months – does this sound familiar?) and struggling with depression.  But Rosebery’s complex character is fascinating.

The bluest of blue-blooded aristocrats, he was vastly wealthy and loved luxury, owning 20 Charles Street in Mayfair and three enormous country houses.  At Oxford, told to choose between owning race-horses, deemed inappropriate for an undergraduate, and taking his degree, Rosebery chose the horses.  His wealth increased even further when he married the heiress Hannah de Rothschild against opposition from both their families (‘I do not know the young lady personally’, said Rosebery’s ducal stepfather, ‘but I am told that the family is well-to-do in the City’). Rosebery was devastated when Hannah died at the age of 39 in 1890. 

Rosebery is best remembered for his connection with Oscar Wilde.  Rosebery was bisexual, and after Hannah died had a relationship with, among others, Lord Drumlanrig, the older brother of Lord Alfred Douglas (Wilde’s ‘Bosie’) who eventually shot himself.  Their father, the Marquess of Queensberry, travelled to Germany to horsewhip the Earl in the same manner as he later attacked Wilde.  Rosebery’s reputation overshadowed Wilde’s trial in January 1895 with the prospect of the Prime Minister being scandalously dragged into the witness box and cross-examined on oath about his own sexual behaviour.  It was partly the stress of this prospect which caused his resignation.

Rosebery lived on until 1929, occasionally attacking his former Liberal friends from his seat in the House of Lords, and enjoying his horses and his books.

Earl of Derby (23rd February 1852 to 17th December 1852; 20th February 1858 to 11th June 1859; 28th June 1866 to 25th February 1868), by Rob Smith

Despite being Prime Minister three times (and being the first person to do so) Edward Smith-Stanley, 14^th Earl of Derby, spent less than four years as Prime Minister. While he may have been forgotten by all but political historians, he is commemorated by a rather fine block of Victorian social housing in Kings Cross.

Lord Derby started his career representing one of the so-called rotten boroughs – a Hampshire village with a population of 500 and its own MP, at a time when Middlesex, with a population of over a million, also had just one MP. Lord Derby’s third administration did a lot to reduce the number of rotten boroughs, passing the 1867 Reform Act, although some said his motivation for the act was to keep the Conservatives in power.

While there is a statue to him in Parliament Square, Derby Lodge (formerly Derby Buildings), the block of flats named after him in Wicklow Street and built in 1865, provide a more practical memorial. Built by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, they were an attempt to rehouse some of the many people displaced by the building of St. Pancras station, and therefore constituted some of London’s first social housing. Derby’s son, Lord Stanley, being a patron of the Company (and whom the Stanley Buildings at Kings Cross are named after), is probably the reason that this largely forgotten PM is commemorated here.

We pass Derby Lodge on our tour ‘Following the Hidden River Fleet’ which we hope to do again some time in the next year.

William Pitt the Elder (Earl of Chatham) (30th July 1766 – 14th 0ctober 1768), by Marilyn Greene

A tatty wooden plaque outside a 1950s house in the hamlet of Northend, Hampstead, is an unexpected find which represents the site of a residence of one of Britain’s most renowned politicians.

William Pitt the Elder, or Lord Chatham, was in Government 1756 to 1761 and Prime Minister 1766 to 1768. His power came from his brilliant oratory and dramatic voice.  Whilst out of government, he became famous for his attacks on the government of the day.

He is best known as the wartime political leader of Britain in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) – the first truly global war.  He was devoted to the notion of victory over France, one which confirmed Britain’s dominance over world affairs.

Pitt is also known for his popular appeal, opposition to corruption in government, support for the colonial position in the run-up to the American War of Independence, expansionism and colonialism, and his antagonism toward Britain’s rivals for colonial power, Spain and France

Throughout his life he suffered from depression and he was plagued with gout.  In 1767 at the invitation of entrepreneur Charles Dingley, who was involved in enterprises such as building London’s roads and canals, Pitt locked himself away in Dingley’s house. He would not leave his room, had to be served food through a hatch, and even refused to appear when King George III came to visit. The house was subsequently bombed in the Second World War and all that now remains is the ruin of the garden gate and the surrounding wall which now forms part of Hampstead Heath.

In 1778, Pitt had a seizure in the House of Lords during a debate on the American War of Independence and died later at his home in Hayes Kent 

The site features in Marilyn’s tour The Wyldes of Hampstead, Exploring Hampstead’s Northern Slopes.

Sir Winston Churchill (10th May 1940 to 26th July 1945; 26th October 1951 to 5th April 1955), by Stephen Benton

One cannot have a piece on British Prime Ministers without including probably the most famous of them all – Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965). He had two spells as Prime Minister. He is best known as the wartime Prime Minister but he also held this office later in the early 1950s.

There are some 26 plaques in Britain which commemorate or mention him and 8 of these are in London. They start with a childhood home at 29 St James’ Place, SW1, where he lived from 1880 to 1883. Then there is his home from 1909 to 1913 at 34 Eccleston Square, SW1, at which time he held senior ministerial positions in the Asquith administration and where his son Randolph was born in 1911.

A third plaque in Sussex Square marks the location of his home from 1921 to 1924 and there is a fourth at Morpeth Mansions, SW1, where he lived between 1930 and 1939, a  period known as the ‘wilderness years’ when he held no high office.  However, he was still extremely active politically as the main opponent of the government’s policy of appeasement in the face of increasing German, Italian and Japanese militarism. Finally, we come to 28 Hyde Park Gardens, SW7, the place where he died on 24 January 1965.

There are three more plaques in London which mention him. One is at Caxton Hall, Westminster, where he regularly spoke between 1937 and 1942. A second is at the site of St .Paul’s School, Hammersmith where on 15 May 1944, together with the King, he was presented with final plans for the D-day landings. There is also a plaque to commemorate his lying-in state in Westminster Hall in January 1965.