British Museum Commercial Gates

The imposing gates installed at the British Museum are over 250 years old. These beautiful gates were installed with a series of underground gears, to allow them to be opened perfectly synchronized with one another, by hand crank. Whilst visually stunning, it was quite a physically demanding process to open and close the gates each day. Our client got in touch, asking if it was possible to automate this process, without affecting the look of the grade 2 listed gates, or altering the existing gearing system. Fortunately, innovation is a strong point of Perimeter Automation!

Working closely with Acorn Restorations, together we created a upstand pedestal to mount a motor with a bespoke set of gears to bolt onto the existing 250 year old gearing. The pedestal was made in keeping with the gates, and painted to match. Adapting a ~2 ton cast iron gate leaf presented a whole host of safety challenges, as such the gates operate on a ‘dead man switch’ principle, coupled with PIR sensors.