pumpkinstrokemarrow

This brought on the speculation about the purpose of suburban gates, that is to say gates to suburban houses, speculation brought on by the arrival of a large and imposing wooden version of a farm gate at a house near here. My belief is that such gates are largely to do with creating an impression.

Once upon a time we had stately homes in the country. Quite of lot of them had enclosing brick walls. The brick walls including one or more gatehouses or entrances, usually equipped with large and imposing wrought iron gates. Kept shut to keep the natives out. We also had farms in the country. Quite a lot of them had gates - five barred wooden affairs. Kept shut to keep the cows in and to give the toffs on horses something to jump over. In both cases there is a real function for the gates. They were generally kept shut and in working order.

Suburban houses are rather different, and neither of the aforementioned applications applies, although many of them still have gates.

In our road in Epsom, most of the between wars houses were built with low brick walls to the front garden, pierced with both pedestrian and vehicular gates of wrought iron. Most of these are now missing and few of those that are still there are used.

Our roads and nearby roads also sport a number of wooden gates. Some of them quite large and imposing, like the one where we started at. Some of them are kept shut. None of them, to my knowledge at least, are dog-proof, so that cannot be the purpose.

One house (of entirely ordinary size. Not at all stately) sports modern tubular steel fence with brick pillars and matching steel gates. These are kept shut and are, I believe, on a remote control. Altogether a rather elaborate affair, almost certainly the most expensive this side of Epsom. I think the people who live in the house come from abroad and so may have brought an abroad custom with them. Or maybe they have been burgled and are a bit twitchy on that account. The fence and gates would deter a casual youth burglar, at least from frontal assault. I don't know what they do about the back, which backs onto the stream running along the allotments where I used to allot. Probably not much of a deterrent, but you do have to go to the bother of getting into the stream.

My parents' post war house in Cambridge was built with a single pair of gates, made of wood, probably by the house builder, wood being cheaper than wrought iron at that time. While the gates were not lockable, when shut they may well have proved a useful deterrent to the exit of small children, there being no barrier between the front and back gardens of the sort that most of the houses in our road have (nice children not playing in the front garden). I don't suppose any of these wooden gates are still there, not that I have looked recently.

Our house in Norwich was on an estate built in the 1970's and the front gardens were open plan. No serious fences or gates at all, although I think our house had loops of ornamental chain hanging between short posts by way of a fence. There may have been restrictive covenants. But the effect was pleasingly open.

All of which leaves me with the thought that the gates of suburban houses are mainly to do with the occupants feeling the need for a bit of aggrandizement. Or perhaps a need for a bit of symbolic closure? To reinforce the privacy of the nest. Or perhaps a need to provide some visual emphasis to the front garden? To make it quite clear to passers by that this was not one of those houses which opened direct onto the pavement. Clearly an admirable topic for a bit of research. Perhaps an MPhil from the University of the Creative Arts entitled 'Expressing the need for spatial closure in the suburbs of northern Surrey'? Or perhaps the sort of footslogging research they like for GSCEs? Marching in mixed pairs around the suburbs and plotting the incidence of gates of various sorts on various diagrams and maps.