Main Gate & Boundary

Gate and Door Are Different Questions

A plot has a boundary gate. The house within it has a front door. They need not face the same way, and each is assessed separately.

This page covers the gate and the boundary. For the door itself — its zone, what faces it, whether the approach is lit and clear — the entrance check covers a different set of questions.

Preferred Gate Positions

The north, north-east and east are the favoured zones for a gate. The north-west and west are acceptable and common. The south-east and south are not preferred, and the south-west is the least preferred of all.

In practice the gate position is decided by where the road runs, and that is not something a household chooses. A plot with road access only from the south-west will have its gate there. This is a very common finding and it is not worth structural work.

The Boundary Wall Rule

The traditional preference is a heavier and higher boundary on the south and west, lighter on the north and east. It follows the same logic as everything else in the south-west: weight and enclosure belong there.

An even wall all round is perfectly workable, and most modern plots are built that way. The reverse arrangement — higher on the north and east — is the one worth correcting, and only when the wall is being built or rebuilt. Demolishing a sound wall over this is disproportionate.

What Outweighs the Direction

The check above puts six of fourteen points on the gate's condition and the approach — more than the zone and the wall combined.

A gate that sticks, squeaks, sags or has rusted through is the finding, and it is the first thing anyone arriving at the property touches. Overgrowth, bins, parked material and stored items at the entrance work against it regardless of which way it faces.

Both are cheap to fix, and both do more than any amount of thinking about the direction of a gate that cannot move.

Which Way It Opens

A gate is traditionally hung to open inward, which reads as drawing in rather than pushing away. Rehanging one is straightforward where the approach allows, and it is a genuine small correction.

Where a narrow street or a slope makes an inward gate impractical, a sliding gate is entirely normal and nothing to worry about. Practicality has always been part of building.

Gate, Door and the Straight Line

Traditional practice generally prefers that the gate, the front door and the back door are not aligned in a single straight line — the idea being that what enters should move through the property rather than straight past it.

Where they are aligned, the usual response is a screen, a partition or a change of level that interrupts the line, rather than moving anything structural.