A kissing gate is a traditional way of allowing access, but not security, between a pasture or other open area used for livestock, and the grounds of an estate where animals are not permitted. In a modern farm, one would probably place a latching gate there with or without a padlock as needed.

Today a kissing gate might be built to accommodate a wheelchair.

For people wearing good clothes, the kissing gate–which has no latch and doesn’t have to be dragged open and closed–allows people to easily step into a small enclosure, frequently circular, and then push the hinged gate and step through into the other side of the enclosure one at a time. The enclosure is too small for a cow or horse, so the gate effectively keeps out livestock.

The kissing gate was an easy solution where many people might come and go in a setting where a stile (more or less a set of steps built into a fence) doesn’t serve for people wearing formal clothes or for the elderly or infirm where climbing up and over the fence is unwise or ungainly. The kissing gate was frequently used to keep livestock out of rural cemeteries built within or next to a pasture.

The name which has been in use since the 1870s refers to the gate touching the metal or wood enclosure and not to the gate being a place where people meet for trysts.

–Malcolm

The four novels in the Florida Folk Magic Series can be bought together in one Kindle volume. The series features a conjure woman and her friends battling the KKK in the Florida Panhandle in the 1950s.