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10 Downing Street was the residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and seat of the government of Great Britain, and later the UK from the 17th century to the early 21st century.
It was located in the City of Westminster.[nb 1]
History
Early history
10 Downing Street was badly built on shallow foundations by a crooked speculator, Sir George Downing, in the 1680s. (AUDIO: Upstairs)
As the Ninth Doctor recalled, in 1730 "a nice man" called Mr Chicken occupied the property. (TV: World War Three)
Sir Robert Walpole, the First Lord of the Treasury, accepted 10 Downing Street as his official residence in the 1730s. He stipulated that the property should be held for the exclusive use of Britain's heads of government after him. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac)
From 1796, weekly Cabinet meetings were held in the Cabinet Room. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac)
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was the last Prime Minister to refuse to use 10 Downing Street as his official home. (AUDIO: Upstairs)
20th century
The Eighth Doctor claimed to have chained Emmeline Pankhurst to the railings outside Downing Street. (PROSE: Casualties of War)
In 1974, the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart met with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street to discuss the approaching poison cloud caused by the Zircon. According to another account, it was the Fourth Doctor, Joan Brown and General Maxwell-Lennon. (COMIC: Doomcloud)
By 1991, following an unsuccessful terrorist attack, (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac) the Cabinet Room was almost impregnable for the safety of government officials when three inches of steel were installed into every wall of the room. (TV: World War Three)
21st century
On New Year's Day 2000, amidst the chaos of the Y2K bug, 10 Downing Street was the site of a skirmish between the British army and agents of the Voracians, who were planning a coup with Prime Minster Terry Brooks. Through the use of a tank, the Fourth Doctor assisted in destroying the Voracian agents and forcing Brooks to confess to his scheme in a live broadcast to Parliament, as well as tracking down the base of the Voracian's final operation and defeating them for got. (PROSE: Millennium Shock [+]Loading...["Millennium Shock (novel)"])
In 2005, at least part of 10 Downing Street was damaged by the explosion caused by Major Kirby's detonation of his suicide bomb. (AUDIO: The Longest Night [+]Loading...["The Longest Night (audio story)"])
During the Slitheen takeover on 7 March 2006, it was destroyed by a harpoon missile. Mickey Smith (TV: World War Three [+]Loading...["World War Three (TV story)"]) wrote on his website about how the seat of the government was rubble the morning after. (PROSE: Hoax This! [+]Loading...["Hoax This! (short story)"])
The explosion levelled the building and killed all but one of the Slitheen within the Prime Minister's office. (TV: World War Three [+]Loading...["World War Three (TV story)"], Boom Town [+]Loading...["Boom Town (TV story)"])
Just before the explosion occurred, the Twelfth Doctor arrived through a rip in time (narrowly avoiding a run-in with his past self) in pursuit of the time flies operated by the Time Weavers. (COMIC: A Stitch in Time)
As Prime Minister, Harriet Jones ordered that the house be rebuilt exactly as it was. This work was still ongoing at the time of the Sycorax invasion of Earth. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac)
By the time that Harold Saxon took office in the 2000s,[nb 2] it had been re-built. Saxon, who was in reality the Master, considered the Cabinet to have displayed disloyalty in abandoning their own parties to jump on his winning band wagon and so gassed them to death in the Cabinet Room. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
On 1 January 2021, Prime Minister Jo Patterson unveiled the defence drones during a televised press conference outside 10 Downing Street. Later, when the defence drones began their hostile takeover of Earth, they exterminated Patterson when she refused to surrender to them. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes
The exterior of 10 Downing Street featured in a promotional teaser for Meet the Thirteenth Doctor, with the number 10 on the door changed to 13.
Footnotes
- ↑ We know from the birds-eye view of the area in The Christmas Invasion [+]Loading...["The Christmas Invasion (TV story)"] that the London Eye is - in conjunction with the map from Revenge of the Slitheen [+]Loading...["Revenge of the Slitheen (TV story)"] - located in Lambeth. The Eye is shown to be on the opposite bank of the River Thames to the Palace of Westminster in Aliens of London [+]Loading...["Aliens of London (TV story)"], thereby placing the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, according to the map from Revenge of the Slitheen [+]Loading...["Revenge of the Slitheen (TV story)"]. As Harriet Jones leaves Downing Street following its destruction in World War Three [+]Loading...["World War Three (TV story)"], she is then shown to be on a street just outside the Palace of Westminster. This would therefore also place Downing Street in the City of Westminster.
- ↑ According to the episode The Sound of Drums, Martha Jones' present day during series 3 of Doctor Who takes place over a six-day period, with the Saxon Master being elected three days after Smith and Jones, and the Toclafane invading Earth five days after Smith and Jones. However, sources differ on which dates these stories are set. According to PROSE: The Paradox Moon, the Toclafane invasion happens on 23 June 2007, placing the events of Smith and Jones on 18 June. According to AUDIO: Hysteria, Smith and Jones takes place in 2008, with a UNIT mission log in AUDIO: Recruits referring to the recovery of moon rocks from Royal Hope Hospital in March 2008. A newspaper clipping in PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters places Smith and Jones on a Sunday 4 June, thus placing the Toclafane invasion on Friday 9 June. In the real world, these dates do not fall on a Sunday and Friday in either 2007 or 2008.
