Palmers Green (N13) is 12 minutes up the A105 from my Tottenham base, typically 22 to 32 minutes door-to-door. The characteristic housing is 1930s semis off Bourne Hill and Fox Lane, many still with their original 5-lever mortice locks, which seize up with age and usually pick non-destructively, occasionally need a full strip-and-service.
Beyond the 1930s semis, the housing mix in N13 also includes Edwardian terraces along Green Lanes and Aldermans Hill, slightly older stock with bay-fronted front doors and the classic mortice-plus-night-latch combination, plus pockets of post-war infill blocks where the original suburban estates were patched after bomb damage. The semis themselves typically have a solid-timber front door with a 5-lever BS3621 mortice and a Yale night latch, sometimes with the original 1930s ironwork still in place, and a back door that’s either similar timber or a more recent UPVC replacement. That mix means one call-out can involve both a vintage mortice service at the front and a snapped-key extraction on the tired night latch at the back.
The three jobs I see most often in N13 are 1930s mortice seizes, snapped keys in worn night latches, and Euro-cylinder upgrades on composite front doors. The mortice seizes are usually a lubrication and lever-cleaning job on the bench, the case itself is sound. The snapped keys follow the standard pattern, the spring on the night latch weakens after decades of use, the customer pushes harder to compensate, and the key eventually shears at the shoulder, spiral extraction pulls the shank cleanly in nearly every case. The cylinder upgrades to BS Kitemark 3★ anti-snap come up regularly when a homeowner has either replaced the original timber door with a composite or wants to bring an existing composite up to standard, flat £120 fitted.