The OED defines a kissing gate as ‘a small gate swinging in a U- or V-shaped enclosure, so as to allow only one person to pass at a time’, with its earliest citation from 1875. But Google Books quickly reveals many earlier instances…

The earliest of these I can find is from Francis Lloyd’s 1844 novel (published anonymously) called Hampton Court, or The Prophecy Fulfilled, referring to ‘the swing bars of Petersham meadow kissing gate’. (This is Turner’s painting of this area from Richmond Hill.)

Here’s Charles Mackay, author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and a prolific Victorian songwriter, with a poem published in 1859 ‘founded on an old custom’, bringing us back to smooching:

Three years later Mackay also wrote a novel, The Gouty Philosopher, locating a ‘kissing gate’ in a churchyard. But then The Churchman’s Shilling Magazine has a reference in 1867 to a kissing gate on a coastal footpath, no church in sight.

The very earliest reference I can find anywhere to a ‘kisting gate’ is from Pamela Haines’ 1981 novel The Kissing Gate, which seems to allow for *all* of our definitions.

And they all reappear in the @guardian’s Notes and Queries from 2016, with no clear sources given: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-24779,00.html

And in fact the original Notes & Queries argued about it back in 1904! The Internet Archive has multiple Victorian/early 20th C books about rural dialect, and ‘kissing gate’ typically features in those from southern England (similar are cuckoo gate, clap gate and lappin gate)

A ‘kist’ is normally a stone coffin, so not something you’d be lugging around much, and my feeling is that the Scottish/northern English use of ‘kist’ has somehow got muddled with the lych-gate, where a coffin would be sheltered until a funeral.

Is there a north-south divide between ‘kisting’ and ‘kissing’ for the etymology of this term? We definitely need more evidence, and the former doesn’t seem to have any pre-20th C evidence at all! (Pic by my friend Jody, https://www.instagram.com/jodyoreillyprints/)

If you know of earlier sources for these terms, let me know! And in the meantime, if you enjoy historical rabbit holes, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter, via @gethistories or https://www.gethistories.com

UPDATE! @bnarchive provides this snippet from a report of the Suffolk assizes in the 4th April 1820 edition of the London Star, certainly suggesting the term was in common use then. Definitely not in a churchyard!