Why do people have garden gates?

To indicate that your property is not a public right of way?

But the only way you can go is to the front door. I'm talking about a normal house with a garden, not a huge mansion or farm estate.

They stop rubbish blowing in.

It discourages dog owners from letting their pets in for toileting purposes.

It can discourage vehicle doing a 3 point turn from using your front garden driveway as extra road space.

On a council estate I guess so. We don't tend to have rubbish lying about here.

I've never seen anyone do that. Although I do see them allowing their dog to piss on the (outside) of someone's fence or hedge. I always tell them they're disgusting. People seem to think that dog piss is ok, and only s*it is dirty. When I ask them if they would mind if I pissed in their garden, they often get very angry.

If the road was a decent width, that wouldn't be needed either. And if the road is narrow and I can't do a 3 point turn on it, and there's a gate in the way, I'd nudge it.

Two reasons. Decorative and keep dogs out.

Wrong on all counts.

To keep the householder secure. Mentally that is, not in any other way because in the UK just about everyone and his dog [and cat] has a right to wander around a chaps property.

AB

Mine is required by the feu charter, to keep out cattle and sheep. Doesn't keep out the deer, though...

Bollocks.

From :-A government website, about as definitive as it gets

" Excepted land

On access land some areas remain private (‘excepted land’). You don’t have the right to access these areas, even if they appear on a map of open access land.

Excepted land includes:

houses, buildings and the land they’re on (such as courtyards) land used to grow crops building sites and land that’s being developed parks and gardens golf courses and racecourses railways and tramways working quarries "

There is a subtle difference in your definition of access.

To roam is to enter a property without purpose, this is not a right.

To wander is different inasmuch a meter reader who is one of those that will be allowed access can wander from room to room looking for a meter.

AB

Actually I'd like to make all people have fences and gates. Down my street so many people have made their front gardens into car parks that trying to do as i used to just a few short years ago, shoreline a fence line to get to the post box or the shops is now an obstacle course of wide open spaces, cars that overhang the premises and stupidly placed wheelie bins. Its like a nightmare for the blind. Now if the front was the only place to put a car, I'd say fine, just put a little raised strip along the boundary, but no, all the houses in my street have gardens and roads at the rear, most of the gardens being over 100 ft long. Plenty of room for a car or two. Its laziness. I call it the Thunderbirds solution. I'd imagine if they could just step into an alcove and slide down into the driving seat than that would be what they would install. Bah Humbug. Brian

Brian Gaff brought next idea :

Likewise here, just laziness. There is a busy regular bus route along the road, at the end of my street. A good half mile of that is occupied by large detached and semi- detached houses, these share a long access road at the rear and a have large-ish rear gardens with garages and parking built on them. Do they use the rear to park, not likely...

They park out front, usually in a continuous row of near 1/2 mile of parked vehicles, causing absolute chaos for traffic. Cars usually manage to somehow get through, but buses really struggle. I have even regularly seen them incredibly park on both sides of the road, making it a real struggle for buses, sometimes impossible.

they keep small dogs and children in, though

Note the "'ALLOWED' access". The only people allowed access without the homeowners permission are (I believe ) crown bailiffs and the police force (sure there are conditions there) all others need the homeowners permission.

You wander into someone's house (without their permission) and see how long it is until the police arrest you .

The right will be granted by a court if the homeowner refuses access.

The homeowner ultimately has little control over swathes of people needing access.

It was the subject of a TV program some years back and many were very surprised. As of course One would expect, if the program was about the patently obvious it wouldn't have seen the studio.

AB

Of course it will(<for the avoidance of doubt that was sarcasm).

What possible reason could jimmy jinkishitter have to roam in your dwelling? Why would a court get involved in granting access

You can tell anyone (barring Police and court bailiffs) to 'f off' if they want access. Witness any amount of videos,newspaper articles etc on BBC license 'enforcers' being refused access.

I suppose it depends on the jurisdiction but I think you would find that any one is allowed entry up to the front door unless steps are taken to stop this.

They probably have to have a lawful excuse for being there, though. Delivering letters, or putting fliers through everyone's letter box, or touting for bob-a-job etc are probably regarded as legal, as is calling on that specific person to see if they are in and want to go for a pint at the pub.

But being there for no good reason (or even for suspected bad reason) would be a different matter.

I lived next door to a policeman, and he kept an eye on the houses in the estate on Mischief Night and Halloween for lads (not from that estate) who were going round throwing eggs at people's front doors. He once nabbed a lad who claimed that he was going to visit his gran to take her a box of eggs that she'd asked for. When he couldn't say what her name was, and guessed an incorrect house number, and couldn't explain why the box only had two eggs in it, and there were egg-stains on the house next door, my neighbour nicked him for malicious damage.

There is probably a pass-and-repass clause as well, as there is technically for public footpaths in England and Wales: you are allowed to walk along a footpath to get from A to B and back again, but you are not (technically) allowed to stop and have a picnic or spend ages in the same place. I think it was added to the public footpath legislation after a wealthy racehorse owner objected to people stopping on a nearby public footpath, armed with binoculars and notebooks to note how well his various horses were running so they could sell this information to bookmakers that were taking bets on the horse races.

I know that Scotland has implied "Open Access" for the whole of the country, and so doesn't have defined rights of way ("everywhere" is a right of way, subject to the exclusions like houses, railway lines etc), but I've always wondered whether marked paths and tracks are still shown on OS maps to denote whether there is a defined route that is habitually walked, so you know that this will be compacted ground and not a ploughed field, and probably way-marked, as opposed to land that may have all sorts of hazards such as streams, bogs etc with no defined crossing points - in England and Wales, you can *usually* assume that a footpath that goes up to a stream bank and continues on the other side will have some means of getting across, whether it's little footbridge, stepping stones or else is so shallow that it can be forded as long as the stream is not in flood. Looking at a Scottish OS maps, there don't seem to be any routes which are marked, not just "you *may* walk here", but additionally "you *can* walk here without getting stuck on impassable ground".

On my street at least, keep leaves, litter and toileting dogs out of the front garden.

You need to move.