ENTRANCE GATES AND LODGES 51 



and money spent upon it will always more than 

 repay the outlay. 



The simple gateway will be discussed on a later 

 page, but there is certainly nothing more excellent 

 than a good wrought-iron gate and properly 

 proportioned piers of brick or stone. The illus- 

 tration in fig. 22, a design adapted from an old 

 example at Croydon, and the arched gateway at 

 West Wittering which forms the title-page to this 

 volume, show two methods of treatment. It 

 depends entirely upon the design and the method 

 of its execution whether such an entrance shall 

 have an inviting or forbidding aspect. Between the 

 present day and the more spacious times of the 

 eighteenth century, when the wrought-iron entrance 

 gate was brought to its perfection, we have had a 

 long period of shameful degradation. The gates and 

 railings of cast'iron, produced by the thousand to com- 

 mercial patterns, have been used ad nauseam in town 

 and country alike, and the dislike which they have 

 called forth is often too strong to be discriminating. 

 But let a simple design be prepared and the work 

 entrusted to an intelligent village smith, and we 

 may rest assured that the forged bars and scroll work 



