Wooden Driveway Gates
in Leigh.

Leigh is the kind of village where a wooden gate is the only correct answer. A small rural Reigate and Banstead parish south of Reigate, built around a traditional village green with surrounding period cottages on Low Weald clay. The residential stock is predominantly detached farmhouse and former agricultural property, with the odd infill of later twentieth-century detached on the lanes off the green. Plot frontages are substantial, boundary hedges are mature and tall, and the entrance treatment sets the whole visual register of the property from the approach.

Oak is the specification most frequently requested in Leigh, because the grain character and the way it weathers over five to ten years fits the rural context better than the more uniform appearance of iroko. The trade-off is seasonal movement: European oak will shrink and expand across the width of a leaf with the summer-to-winter moisture cycle, and the gate maker has to design the framing and ironmongery to accommodate that. Accoya is specified where the homeowner wants the oak-like visual without the maintenance, and accepts the higher material cost for the 50-year durability certificate. Iroko is the pragmatic choice on the larger openings.