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Saving the Red Cross building: Mission nearly accomplished!

Restoring and putting to good use Barnet’s rich heritage of historic buildings has become an increasingly challenging task which makes the story behind the project to preserve and re-open the former Red Cross building in St Albans’ Road all the more remarkable.  Ten years ago the Red Cross indicated that it intended to vacate what had once been Christ Church School and put the 169-year-old flint-faced building on the market.

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Barnet Football Club’s departure going ahead as planned

Barnet Football Club’s match against Wycombe Wanderers in the npower League 2 on Saturday 20 April will be the Bees’ last fixture at Barnet’s Underhill stadium. From the end of August and the start of the 2013-14 season, Barnet FC’s home fixtures will be played at the Hive Football Centre in Camrose Avenue, Edgware.

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Barnet’s town hall: an inspiring conversion

Barnet’s former town hall, opposite St John’s Church, provides a positive reminder of the imaginative uses which can be found for redundant municipal property. This iconic building has now completed three years as the home of the North London Coroner’s Court and its future seems assured.

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Barnet’s disappearing public houses

The Black Horse

The Black Horse

Like so much of the rest of the country High Barnet is losing its historic public houses at an alarming rate. The Black Horse at the junction of Wood Street and Union Street is the latest to boarded up but Punch Taverns say the closure is only temporary and the company’s “priority is to reopen the pub as soon as possible.”

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Town Centre Uplift

Church Passage
Church Passage

Some long-awaited summer sunshine in late July provided the final seal of approval for Barnet’s town centre uplift and the newly-created meeting and seating area beside St John’s Church.  Instead of a line of forbidding holly bushes there are now new walkways and benches, sweet smelling lavender in freshly formed flower beds, and an attractive beech hedge to provide some privacy.