
An ogee top rail climbs from each outer stile to meet at the centre of the pair, over leaves of round balusters sleeved with stepped collars at two heights. The lower quarter of each leaf is solid, worked into two cusped-corner panels apiece, every one centred on a small quatrefoil rosette. Black, hung between brick piers at the head of a drive.
The collars are what carry it. Each baluster is sleeved twice, and the upper band of collars climbs with the arch instead of running level, so the bars stop reading as a picket field and start reading as a colonnade. The solid lower quarter gives all of that something to stand on and keeps its own detail small — two cusped panels per leaf, each with a rosette you only find on foot.
Pair it with light posts and the frame falls apart: the ogee rail and the rising band of collars both drive at the centre joint, and that needs masonry either side with enough weight to push back — which is what the brick here supplies. The trade for a buyer is a drive that closes without the house going away, since above the panelled lower quarter the leaves stay open the full height.
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