Old World Doors

They say doors act as gateways or portals, transporting us from one environment to another. Like it or not, the simple door can tell the viewer a lot more than you would initially think, from the inlay of the door frame to the material coverings, the story of the building begins. This was something our forefathers understood and gave great reverence to. The doors of the old world are as much art as they are function. Even in our modern times we still unknowingly judge our expectations for the abode on the quality and presentation of its door.

Each door tells a story and each door guards a thousand secrets, and together they could hold the greatest secret of them all. To try and tell each door’s story would be a challenging, but joyful, task and we will do our best to highlight as many as possible in detail over time.

Each of our wonderful doors normally is accompanied by a lock and key and some of these locks carry there own epic saga.

We open this first article as a brief introduction to the fascinating world of doors and locks. This would normally be a stretch of the imagination to assume that looking at doors would be a fun past time, but in the case of the old world, the door is where it all begins. We will start at the top and work our way down and in the case of an old world door, this can be a very high place to start.

When looking at these doors, it begins to become clear that they could not have been designed for an average-sized person and, in the case of the doors above, even a person on horse back would have trouble reaching for the handle. Each of these doors is in a different location around our realm and each is completely oversized!

If you have ever had a dog or cat, you may be familiar with the experience of cutting a hole in your perfectly good door, all to make a personal entrance for your beloved pet to come and go freely to the feeding bowl.

When looking at some of these old world doors and their adaptations, we can’t but help notice the striking similarity with the Morden pet flap, with the major difference that these pet flaps are people-sized.

We accept that in some cases doors need to be big to allow for goods and other objects to pass through, but the same can not be assumed for the key that locks the door, and some of the keys here are completely oversized as well. In fact, many of these surviving locks seem to defy the object of intention. They are so large that a modern person can almost get their hand completely into the lock! This certainly would not be much of a challenge for any lock smith today.

Many of the old world doors we would recognize as being normal size, but they are distinctly different to the modern door in the level of craftsmanship and care that has clearly gone into its creation.

And some doors are so beautiful they do not need buildings.

Have you seen a door or lock of interest on your travels?