Plant identification

At the end of May, one of the plants outside my front door fell over.  Lovely green-fingered friend Hilda came over to give me some advice on what to do with it.  She pruned it back hard and it's sprung back into life beautifully as you can see from this photo.

Anyway in the course of discussions she mentioned the dead bush at the front...and the conversation went something like this...

Hilda: When you remove that dead bush then you can plant a ?......
Me: What dead bush?
Hilda: The one at the front on the other side of the window.
Me: Oh no that's not dead, it has red berries on it at certain times in the year.
Hilda: Really?  When was the last time it had berries?
Me: Oh, hang on, can't really remember, maybe not for a while..
Hilda: (Closely examines bush..and chooses her words carefully....)
Well,, when you do decide it's dead...and want to get rid of it, then you can plant something else on the other side.

Sadly that's the level of my knowledge about gardening - I can't actually identify a huge dead bush at the front of my house as, ....errr dead! 

Anyway I took it out today, and judging from the brittleness of the wood, the lack of any root structure and the fact it fell straight off the wall as soon as I untied it...I think it's been dead for years!