News from The Barnet Society

Most High Barnet residents are familiar with the Marie Foster Centre – awaiting demolition for redevelopment – but few probably realise that when opened in 1973, the 30-bed hospital in Wood Street was the first purpose-built home in the country for young people suffering from multiple sclerosis.

To help celebrate the school’s 130th anniversary, pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, Barnet, organised a wide range of events for their summer fair. Martin Russell, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Barnet, praised the school for its recent academic successes. He was welcomed by the headteacher, Violet Walker.

Two teams of keep-fit enthusiasts entertained shoppers at the Spires shopping centre with a marathon session of continuous press-ups – and raised over £5,000 for charity.

Charging £3,000 to hang heraldic banners from 26 lamp standards in Barnet High Street was condemned as the latest example of the dysfunctional relationship between Barnet Council and its web of private contractors providing out-sourced services.

Such was the enthusiastic response to a real-life re-enactment of the Battle of Barnet that military re-enactors, organisers and visitors were unanimous in their hope that the first-ever Barnet Medieval Festival can become an annual event.

After the closure of High Barnet’s police station in November last year, the local safer neighbourhood police team is keen to improve and maintain contact with local residents.

Barnet High Street is flying heraldic banners from the Wars of the Roses to promote the town’s first-ever medieval festival which is being held this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 10 June) to commemorate the 1471 Battle of Barnet.

Old Fold View was one of several roads in and around High Barnet that was closed off to traffic so that residents could hold a street party to celebrate the Windsor wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Before Selfies is the title of a collection of photographs taken during the lifetime of Fred Jarvis, Barnet’s oldest and most famous trade union leader.

Barnet Borough Council is back firmly under Conservative control after the Labour Party failed to make its much-anticipated breakthrough and ended up losing five seats in the council elections.

A computer-generated image shows the proposed Premier Inn hotel and restaurant to be built on the site of Barnet Market, at the junction of St Albans Road and Chipping Close.

Footfall in the Spires shopping centre is up by over 50 per cent in the first three months of this year – just one of the statistics the management are quoting to squash rumours that two leading tenants, the H&M fashion store and Carluccio’s restaurant, are thinking of pulling out.

A ceremony was held at the construction site of the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice in Byng Road, Barnet, to mark the topping out of an atrium designed as a welcoming focal point for children and families.

Hands-on experience in a great variety of trades, sports and occupations was all part of a careers day organised at the Pavilion School, in Chandos Avenue,Whetstone, which provides support and education for Barnet children who are outside mainstream education.

Cromer Road Primary School’s swimming pool – where countless hundreds of Barnet children have learned to swim over almost half a century – is in desperate need of repairs, improvements and a new roof.

Replica copies of four of the heraldic banners of the dukes, earls and knights who fought in the 1471 Battle of Barnet are now on display in the Spires shopping centre.

Fred Howett, a long-standing member of the Barnet Guild of Artists, who helped to organise regular and numerous local exhibitions of members’ art work, has died at the age of 74.

Fund raisers from across north and central London laid foundation bricks at a ceremony at the construction site in Byng Road, Barnet, for the new Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, due to open in the spring of next year.

A double-brush Hertfordshire hedge – re-laid in a way passed on by a Romany gipsy who lived at Welham Green – is the latest addition to the Barnet Environment Centre in Byng Road. John Sawkins and his son David have spent the winter months relaying hedges around the boundaries of the environment centre.

Keeping the High Street in High Barnet spick and span gives veteran road sweeper Douglas Shrubb so much satisfaction that he has opted to continue working rather than take retirement. Mr Shrubb, who is 66 in March, has been the dedicated road sweeper for the High Street and Wood Street for the last 13 years.