Wooden Driveway Gates
in Godalming.

Godalming is a Waverley market town with a densely historic centre, a railway-era residential boom that produced substantial Victorian and Edwardian detached stock, and a gate market that is close to entirely hardwood. Charterhouse School defines the northern edge of the town and sets the architectural reference for a significant stretch of the residential property north of the High Street: gothic-revival, half-timbered, and late-Victorian brick. These properties call for timber gates with substantial proportions, generous section sizes, and ironmongery that is visibly hand-forged rather than bolted from a hardware catalogue.

The town-centre conservation area covers the historic streets around Church Street, the High Street, and the riverside. Within it, the Waverley design approach for replacement gates is that the new work should be sympathetic to the Victorian and earlier character rather than a pastiche of it: framed-and-braced oak or iroko leaves, simple vertical-bar or plain-boarded fills, hand-forged hinges and latches. Accoya is specified on the exposed approaches south of the town towards the AONB edges; iroko is the practical workhorse on the majority of jobs. The installer handles the conservation officer conversation on your behalf where the property falls inside the designated area.