Birt Acres, a key figure in the invention of British movies, lived and worked in Chipping Barnet. His 1897 short Band Marching down a Street is one of very few to survive from the earliest days of film. Local history investigation has convinced me that it was shot in Stapylton Road.
Barnet might have lost its football club, but another of the town’s sporting traditions is still making history: Barnet Elizabethans Rugby Football Club is about to start a year of commemorative events to celebrate its centenary.
Scenes from the battles of St Albans (1461) and Barnet (1471) – two of the engagements in the Wars of the Roses – are to be re-created as part of the Barnet Medieval Festival to be held over the weekend of June 9 and 10 at the Byng Road playing fields.
Continue reading Re-living the Battles of St Albans and Barnet
Roads running between High Barnet and New Barnet merge together almost seamlessly today, but in the 1930s, when farmland still separated the two towns, the footpath up to the shops in the High Street was through fields filled with cows.
The Barnet Press, once one of the most respected weekly newspapers in North London, has ceased publication after steadily losing circulation and struggling financially.
An unrivalled display of images of Richard III, from his role in the 1471 Battle of Barnet until his death in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, has been amassed by photographer Geoffrey Wheeler.
Two promising pointers towards locating the precise site of the 1471 Battle of Barnet were examined in the final television programme of the current archaeological series, Digging for Britain on BBC4.
After years of uncertainty about its future, Barnet Museum is finally being promised security of tenure – a 125-year lease at a peppercorn rent.
A unique, almost-forgotten tape recording gives a fascinating eye-witness account of every-day life in Barnet at the turn of the century before last, when horse-drawn coaches, traps and wagons filled the High Street, long before the arrival of the motor car.
After an extensive search with metal detectors a highly-experienced team of military archaeologists has unearthed a host of medieval items that might be linked to the 1471 Battle of Barnet.
Continue reading Medieval finds excite Battle of Barnet military archaeologists
A survey to assess the size and shape of the lost hamlet of Kitts End could assist the ongoing archaeological investigation to determine the precise site of the Battle of Barnet of 1471.
Continue reading Was Kitts End closest to the Battle of Barnet?
A series of test pits are to be dug on land inside Wrotham Park as part of an investigation to locate the possible site a chapel that was erected to commemorate men killed in the Battle of Barnet of 1471.
Visitors queued up for opening time at Barnet’s historic well house – not for a drink, but a rare chance to descend the twelve steps to see the tanks of the old physic well.
Barnet’s historic physic well, visited by Samuel Pepys, will be open to the public on Saturday 19 March offering a rare chance to walk down the brick-built stairway to see the tanks filled by spring water.
A question mark hanging over the future ownership of Barnet’s many historic almshouses has finally been resolved after the government gave an assurance they would not be included in the extension of the right-to-buy scheme for housing tenants.
Farmland to the west of Wrotham Park, alongside Kitts End Lane and the St Albans Road, is emerging as a likely site of the Battle of Barnet.
It is not well enough known that British cinema was born in Chipping Barnet 120 years ago. Moving images were then as revolutionary as virtual reality seems now.
Continue reading A Barnet business start up that changed the world
A medieval silver farthing that might have been in use at the time of the Battle of Barnet of 1471 is the most dramatic find discovered so far during searches with metal detectors on farm-land beside Kitts End Lane.
When workmen removed the last wooden panels covering up tiling on the walls of 89 High Street, Barnet, they were able to solve the mystery surrounding the painting of a dairy maid.
Continue reading Painted tiles depicting dairy maid date from 1910
Two Victorian measuring jugs from a former public house in High Barnet have turned up mysteriously in the archives of St Peter’s Church at Formby on Merseyside.
A set of painted wall tiles revealed during building work at 89 High Street Barnet depict a dairy maid holding her pail, with cows and chickens in the background.
A training weekend for local metal dectorists in a freshly ploughed field off Kitts End Lane has kicked off an archaeological investigation to determine the precise site of the Battle of Barnet of 1471.
Decorating the High Street with the banners of medieval noblemen might be one of the ways to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Barnet of 1471 if support can be obtained from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Queen Elizabeth I’s charter of 1573 provided for ‘boys and youth’, but it was not until 1888 that Barnet got a school for girls. Its oldest buildings are not just a gentle monument to a pioneering educational movement, but fine examples of the Arts and Crafts style.
A re-enactment of scenes from a medieval battlefield was the highlight of the official launch of the Battle of Barnet Project – a two-year survey to determine the exact site of one of the grisliest battles of the Wars of the Roses.
Torchlight tour of Barnet’s historic physic well but is another historic building at risk? Local residents had a rare opportunity to see inside Barnet’s historic physic well when Barnet Museum organised an open day at the well house, a short walk from Barnet Hospital.
Barnet Society member Sheila Durchslag has issued an alert over two missing George V plaques from the entrance to the fields off Barnet Lane.
Military archaeologists from Huddersfield University hope to start work in May surveying the possible site of the Battle of Barnet of 1471, in preparation for a full-scale investigation.
Consultations have started on proposals to redevelop part of the course of the Old Fold Manor Golf Club, across land that is currently included in the registered site of the Battle of Barnet.
Barnet Museum is to take the lead in a fresh application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant towards the cost of an archaeological dig to determine the site of the Battle of Barnet of 1471.
Why not become a member? Receive our latest newsletter hot off the press four times a year, and support our work with a membership.
If you have some local news, history or want to bring something to our attention please email us.
Nat Dawbarn posted a comment on Approval for new High Street retail premises and housing at junction with Moxon Street as demolition underway on two other nearby developments
Andrew posted a comment on Barnet Council and MP Dan Tomlinson are ready to take action on reports of shopkeepers selling illegal or counterfeit products
Andrew posted a comment on Approval for new High Street retail premises and housing at junction with Moxon Street as demolition underway on two other nearby developments
Graham Smith posted a comment on Approval for new High Street retail premises and housing at junction with Moxon Street as demolition underway on two other nearby developments