Solution offered in out-of-line gates case

A man regarded in Masterton as a jack-of-all-trades, and pretty well a master of most of them, says it is time Masterton District Council moved to rectify the Hosking Gates debacle.
Dave Tulloch, a semi-retired tradesman who designs and repairs agricultural machinery, said a compromise solution could fairly simply be reached that would at least result in both gates meeting properly in the middle and allowing them to latch up.
The best way of getting round the problem would be to concentrate on lifting the right-hand-side gate as you look towards the gates from the Dixon Street footpath - a process that could be done by any competent engineer.
He said this would result in the outside of that gate not lining up with the outside of the left-hand gate but at least the gates would centre properly and close.
The centre was of more importance as that is where a person's eye is drawn to and, as things stand, it is patently obvious to everyone the gates are mismatched.
Mr Tulloch said it is far too late to think about taking out the heavy concrete pillars and starting again as that would be hugely expensive.
Any suggestion that the impact of the mismatched gates could be minimised by leaving them open was silly.
Mr Tulloch said if the work he had outlined was done the council should then lengthen the spike that was meant to secure the gates when closed - but which is now too short to be of any use - and sink a pipe into the existing concrete pathway for it to fit flush into.
He said when the debate over the gates first arose he suspected they may not have been a matching pair, but since then he had checked them out.
"They are a pair of lovely old wrought iron gates."
Just how old the gates are is a bit of a mystery but it seems from the historical records available that they date back at least 80 years to a 100 years and perhaps longer.
Historian Gareth Winter said it is thought they may have originally been purchased from money left over from another fundraising effort and had first been used elsewhere round the environs of the park.