--- title: "A Sagrado Corazón House From 1957: Is the Lock That Old Too?" description: "Most of the 1957 Sagrado Corazón houses keep their original layout. How to tell whether the front-door lock is that old too, and what replacing it involves." url: "https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/a-1950s-house-in-sagrado-corazon-and-its-lock/" business: "Locksmith Aspe" --- # A 1950s house in Sagrado Corazón: is the lock as old as the door? Most of the 1957 Sagrado Corazón houses keep their original layout. How to tell whether your front-door lock dates from then as well, and what replacing it involves. 16 October 2026 · 5 min read The council’s own planning report calls the Sagrado Corazón scheme the most important housing development of its period in Aspe: 51 houses, built in 1957, and most of them still keep their original form, a single-family house with a garden in front. Plenty of other houses in town are of a similar age. If yours is one of them, the front door may be the original. The question is whether the lock is. ## How to tell how old your lock is **Look at the key.** A long key with a round shaft and a flat “flag” at the end (the old *llave de gorja*) belongs to a lever mortice lock, the kind fitted in that period. A short flat key that slides into a round barrel belongs to a cylinder, which was almost certainly added later. **Look at the edge of the door.** Open it and look at the metal plate on its edge. An old mortice lock usually has a plain plate with one bolt and a latch. Newer locks have a slimmer plate, sometimes with several bolts. **Listen to it.** A lever lock that has worked for decades can feel loose and clunky. That is not a reason to replace it in itself; a sudden change in how it feels is. ## Keep it or replace it? An old lever lock in good order is not automatically insecure, but it has two weaknesses: nobody knows how many keys exist, and the keys themselves are hard to replace if lost. A worn one also starts to fail in a particular way, with the key turning further than it should before the bolt moves. The usual choices are: - **repair** the old lock if the mechanism is sound and you want to keep the door as it is; - **replace the lock body** with a modern mortice lock that takes a euro cylinder, fitted into the same pocket in the door where possible; - **add** a second lock with a cylinder above the old one, leaving the original in place. Before anyone quotes for a cylinder, it helps to know its size: the guide on [measuring a euro cylinder](https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/how-to-measure-a-euro-cylinder/) shows how. If the house came to you through an inheritance and the keys are missing altogether, start with [an inherited house with no keys](https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/inherited-a-house-in-the-old-centre-without-keys/). Decided the old lock should go? Mortice locks repaired or replaced, cylinders changed, on a day that suits you. [Lock change in Aspe, planned for a morning that suits you](https://locksmithaspe.es/lock-change-aspe/) Two more guides - [How to measure a euro cylinder before a lock change](https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/how-to-measure-a-euro-cylinder/) · 4 min read - [Inherited a house in the old centre, and nobody has the keys](https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/inherited-a-house-in-the-old-centre-without-keys/) · 6 min read - [Every guide for Aspe and around](https://locksmithaspe.es/blog/) ## Would a quick call settle it? Call and describe the door, or WhatsApp a photo of the lock with a location pin. Open 24 hours · 7 days [+34 678 583 290](tel:+34678583290) [WhatsApp](https://wa.me/34678583290?text=Hi%2C%20I%20need%20a%20locksmith%20in%20Aspe.%20Where%20I%20am%20(street%2C%20or%20the%20urbanisation%20or%20finca)%20and%20what%20has%20happened%3A)