Oh, if only cutting it off at the root would work! I would definitely cut it at the base, any stems you can find, then remove some soil to expose woody roots and drill into those, or make cuts in them, and apply SBK brushwood killer. That should take care of the roots, though you should keep a careful watch for signs of regrowth - if that happens, dig around where the growth's coming from and treat similarly.

As for the topgrowth, well, depends what the arch is made of - if its brick, the growths will have rooted into the mortar and brick, so removing it should be done with care. You may have to just take off what you can and leave the rest in situ. It won't look great, because it'll be dead growths stuck to the brickwork. If the arch is, say, metal or something, then you should be able to rip it off, or cut through the major stems and hack it down.

Bamboo, para 1, is exactly what we did with the ivy on the side of our house. You will then need to, carefully, pully the ivy off your structure, possibly cutting some bits and pulling others.

If you can bear to leave the dying ivy in situ until it is quite dead and brown you should find most of it it then lifts of easily but it will be quite unsighty in the meantime.

Thanks B and others, there is some hope for me then. The arch is built of red brick and mortar,which my wife then painted white - like everything else. I went to work one day and on my return she had painted the whole damn bungalow white !

However you decide to remove it please, please do check that there are no birds nesting in it. Sparrows in particular love ivy as a home. If there is a nest, can you wait until autumn before killing it off?

Sparrows, blimey, not seen one of them for what seems like centuries, is there a colony in Cheshire, Hank? Have you got a colony near you then, Arbuthnot? We get dunnocks here, but no sparrows.

We currently have robins and wrens nesting in the ivy. I like your white house!

House sparrows are still common in Scotland, Bamboo, we have a lot nesting in and near our garden. I have recently heard that they have all but dissapeared in London - a political gesture?

Have seen no sparrows in the Stockport area. Very friendly blackbirds though.

Ha ha, maybe bulbaholic - but they've been gone for years here in West London. I think there's a colony in the south west of London, somewhere like Sheen I seem to recall, saw it on the tv. I remember them clearly as a child in South London - they have a particular cheep they make, quite noisy when they're altogether. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever seeing a sparrow since 1977, when I moved this side of London - maybe they only stayed where the cockneys were back then!

Here in Buckingham there seem to be plenty of sparrows though not as many as expected. I've seen the parents feeding babies in my garden though so the numbers may increase again.