Gated Community

I went hacking today, it was raining a bit (!) as we've had the tail end of several North Atlantic Hurricanes and storms pass over so its been a bit wet and windy. Hey ho, better make the best of it or it will be a very long winter!

I set myself a little home work project a while ago on "Monmouthshire Gates" so to entertain myself I thought I should do some research on what the locals have...

Typical narrow lane gateway with sheep netting

Our neighbors pretty rounded end gate.

An unusual pair of mesh gates into sheep fields.

Modern, horse and dog friendly galvanised
with mesh

Wooden driveway gate
(don't think it moves much)

A couple of old iron gates that are more
like hurdles; straight bar and diamond.

A well made and fairly attractive angle
iron gate. Not terribly horse friendly though.

Old (retired!) plain iron gate and post.

When we bought the land there was next to no fencing and most of the gates had turned to rust.  Those that were still being used as gates had been hung from trees as there were hardly any fence posts let alone gate posts due to the stony ground.  40-50 years ago when the farmer last fenced the land it was done by hand, the stones making it nearly impossible to put in posts so any nearby trees were used to pin wire or hinge gates to.  Most of the original land boundaries round our way are stone walls or hedges because of this.

 

The Gate in the Tree

Nowadays with modern machinery and a better understanding of the environment most farmers have managed to install wooden fencing rather than use the trees as fence posts, something we were keen to avoid from the start.  

The photo below shows the typical landscape in Monmouthshire where pastures are bordered by thick hedges.  Where possible landowners and farmers have maintained, restored or reinstated their hedges by planting native shrubs and trees, fencing them off while they establish.  Through early spring you often see hedge layers cutting and laying overgrown hawthorn and holly that have turned to trees, it looks quite harsh treatment but they usually survive and accept their new road-side shape.  We have our own overgrown hawthorn hedge that will need re-laying next spring.

Glorious Wales

Where there are hedges and walls there have to be openings and access routes.  We have two modern galvanised entrance gates that are in good order but there was also an array of rusty iron farm gates in a variety of styles and sizes.  We generally try to conserve, recylcle and improve what we have and I loved the curved tops to some of the "antique" gates but most were beyond saving.  

 

Luckily Woody is pretty handy with a welder and set about repairing some to their former glory.  Sadly we have had to scrap most of them but he did manage to save one; painted white to match the silver birch copse it hangs pride of place on a study set of solid new wooden posts. 

It got me thinking about its simple design; three uprights and six vertical, with a hand friendly curved edge, why do some gates have diagonal bracing and others don't; strength, safety, cost, design?

Woody bought a book on Gates; Gates & Stiles by Michael Roberts.  It beautifully illustrates the gate patterns and styles.  I love that each county or area has its own style of gate, all different from the preferred type of wood to the flourish of gate arms, closures, hinges even the number of bars can identify the area you are in...well unless you're in farmland with nothing but galvanised gates.

There are various names to describe the parts of a gate;

• Hunch/heel - the hinge end
• Shutting head - the upright closing end.
• Beam or Top bar
• Vertical bars within the gate - struts
• Horizontal bars - rails/bars
• Diagonal bars - Dagger/Stag bar

As I found on my research hack today traditional wooden Monmouthshire gates are few and far between but there are a couple of good examples at GlamorganWalks.com.  Woody had plans for making our own wooden gates but time and energy means we are quite happy buying bog standard gates for the moment!   Even hanging a set of lightweight galvanised gates had its problems (see; Land Week 4th-18th September) but Woody did a grand job setting the hefty gate posts in concrete and giving us an official entrance to the land.

Ta-dah! They may just be gates but they are our gates!

For the moment many of our internal gates are the electric fence kind!  They do a good job while we figure out where we want paddocks, they provide a quick and simple solution.

Alongside traditional gateways we have plans to introduce sliding rails into fence and hedge lines to create part time/occasional field access that will also act as jumps for schooling the horses.  I also have plans on adding tiger traps and reinstating the odd stone wall back into the boundaries so the neighbour and I can play cross country jumping!