Southgate (N14) is 15 minutes up to the west of my Tottenham base, typically 25 to 38 minutes door-to-door. N14 is mostly classic 1930s suburban London, semi-detached houses with their original mortice locks, usually worth servicing, plus a good share of replacement composite doors on which the Euro cylinder is due for a proper anti-snap upgrade.
The housing here is dominated by interwar semi-detached estates running through Cannon Hill, Osidge Lane and The Bourne, three and four bedroom family homes with substantial timber front doors and the original 1930s ironwork still in place on a fair share of them. Along Chase Side you’ve got interwar parades with flats above the shops, and near the station there’s a layer of newer flat blocks with composite doors and Euro cylinders. Most of the suburban front doors run a 5-lever BS3621 mortice paired with a Yale night latch, and a back door that’s typically been replaced in the 2000s with a UPVC unit, now twenty-odd years old.
The three jobs I see most often in N14 are 1930s mortice servicing, keyed-alike upgrades across front, back and side doors, and Euro-cylinder upgrades on replacement composite doors. The original mortices generally pay to be serviced rather than replaced, the case is solid cast iron and built to last another fifty years if the levers are clean and lubricated. Keyed-alike upgrades are a steady booked-in job across the suburbs of N14, families with three or four external doors wanting one key that opens the lot, useful when the school-run bag is already full without carrying a separate set for each lock. The Euro-cylinder upgrades come up when a homeowner has either fitted a new composite door at the front or wants to bring an existing one up to BS Kitemark 3★ anti-snap standard, fitted at a flat £120.