GATES and LOCAL DISTINCTIVENESS

You used to be able to tell where you were simply from the gate patterns -almost every county had its own. Starting from necessity (keeping lambs in means smaller gaps at the bottom) and moving towards idiosyncracy (Gloucestershire and Wiltshire were the home of the elaborately carved ‘harr’). Once you have noticed that they are small signatures, conveying the subtlety of Local Distinctiveness, you cannot stop looking in the hope that particularity, local knowledge, local woodland and local jobs are still tied together through this simplest of forms.

It is quite clear from those which do survive that it is possible to achieve standards without standardization.