Kickstop Architectural Hardware: Bolt & Bar

Kickstop is a UK burglary-prevention hardware brand specialising in secondary door security for timber doors and frames. It’s basically the “stop your door being kicked in” ecosystem: steel reinforcers, anti-jemmy plates, and frame-strengthening bars designed to deal with the ugly truth that a traditional timber door often fails at the frame/keep area long before the lock itself gives up. 

The range was devised in 1988 by a family firm of locksmiths and security retailers in East London, after seeing a growing trend of burglars simply kicking in doors. Their premise is simple: morticing and lock fitting removes wood and weakens the door/edge, so reinforcing those stress points dramatically increases resistance to forced entry. 

What Kickstop is known for (the stuff you’ll actually fit):

• London Bar – a heavy steel door-frame reinforcing bar that secures the area around the nightlatch/rim lock keep (staple) to resist splitting and forced opening. 

• Birmingham Bar – a flat reinforcing strip used to strengthen the frame on the hinge side (or lock side where relevant), also marketed for resisting jemmy/chisel attacks on outward-opening doors when fixed externally with security screws. 

• LockGuard / Door Reinforcer plates – bolt-through steel plates that reinforce the door around mortice deadlocks/sashlocks (UK lever, euro, oval), targeting the weakened section created by cutting in the lockcase. 

• StapleGuard and other keep/strike reinforcers – focused protection for the frame keep zone, supplied with security fixings and offered in multiple sizes/finishes. 

• Anti-thrust / anti-jemmy plates – overlap plates for outward-opening doors, designed to resist levering and prying, sold as part of what they claim is the largest commercially available anti-thrust range. 

Kickstop positions itself as having Britain’s largest range of these reinforcement-style, crime-prevention products, aimed at both the trade and competent DIY installs. In short: it’s not “a lock brand,” it’s “make the door and frame stop behaving like wet cardboard under attack.”