Casually Inventing a New Gate Hurdle

Last Friday I had the honour of working with Martin Wise who has been a gate hurdle maker for many years in the South Oxfordshire area.

Gate hurdles, unlike hurdle hurdles, are made from cleaving a log, in this case sweet chestnut into two ‘heads’ and five ‘rails’ along with three supports, one down the middle and traditionally one on each side.  But not on this particular Friday.

Oh no.  Martin and myself invented the ‘Oxfordshire/Tottenham’ style with the supporting struts sporting a parallel design.  As all the rails were connected to the top or bottom rail Martin couldn’t see a reason not to try it out and it seemed to work ok!

A comment from a Facebook group wondered how long the gate would hold its strength but I guess we’ll have to wait and find out!  Keep peeled for an update in the next few months.