世界风景名胜英语介绍

2024年3月10日发(作者：招商咨询)

a brief history of no_10 downing street 英国唐令街10号

The first domestic hou known to have been built on the site of Number 10

was a large dwelling lead to Sir Thomas Knyvet, a Parliamentarian and Justice of

the Peace. It was Knyvet who arrested Guy Fawkes for the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

After his death the hou pasd to his niece, Mrs. Hampden, the aunt of Oliver

Cromwell.

The front part of the hou we e today, and the adjoining hou at Number

Eleven, were built by a Harvard graduate and property speculator called George

Downing. He acquired rights to the site during the brief period of Parliamentary

rule in the 17th Century. A portrait of the man, who was widely regarded as a

profiteering rogue, now hangs in the Entrance Hall.

The very ordinary address and the modest terraced face are deceptive, giving

little clue to the real size and grandeur within. Number Ten in fact consists of two

hous. The hou which faces Downing Street is a typical late 17th century town

hou. But it conceals a complicated building which was refronted in the 18th C

and enlarged in the 20th C. A corridor joins this hou to what was once a mansion

in its own right, with a walled garden and a view across Hor Guards' Parade. The

two hous were joined in 1732 when the property became an official government

residence. Sir Robert Walpole moved in in 1735, replacing the last tenant, Mr

Chicken.

At the time Walpole was First Lord of the Treasury and was informally en as

the first British Prime Minister. Walpole cured the property as a residence for all

future First Lords of the Treasury. Today the Prime Minister still resides at Downing

Street by right as First Lord of the Treasury, and accordingly his title adrorns the

letter-box on the famous black front door.

The hou has en much restoration, alteration and tinkering over the years.

It has changed to accommodate new functions for the building, the fashions of the

times, the tastes of its occupants and sometimes even urgent need to shore up the

very structure of the hou itlf.

Prime Ministers have overen great changes both within and without the

hou. This has given the hou a different atmosphere almost every generation.

Viscount Goderich ordered the creation of a large dining room at No.10 in the

1820s. The hous on the South side of the street were pulled down in the 1860s to

be replaced by the great buildings of state which now overshadow the modest

terrace. Electricity replaced gas and candlelight in 1894, and telephones arrived

soon after this. In the early 1960s major restructuring work was carried out in order

to save the building from collap and to create a better working environment for

staff. In 1988-89 the architect Quinlan Terry was brought in to enrich the

decoration of the drawing rooms. And in 1993-95 computer cabling, which has

greatly changed the way No.10 staff perform their day-to-day duties, was

installed.

Number 10 Downing Street stands clo to the site of what was once the

palace of Whitehall. This was an enormous rambling collection of buildings and