News from The Barnet Society

After mounting concern about the recent loss of leading retailers, High Barnet’s shopping centre has received a shot in the arm: H&M, the leading Swedish fashion chain, has finally signed up to take the lease of a brand new store in the Spires shopping centre.

After a career switch from his previous job as a political researcher, an aspiring High Barnet furniture and cabinet maker is gaining recognition at a series of craft and design shows.

Support for Barnet Market’s annual classic car show has proved so strong that it has become a showcase event for the increasingly-popular Barnet Classic Car Club. Thirty cars assemble each May beside the market, and around the Spires bandstand, providing an engrossing spectacle for classic car enthusiasts.

Fragments of pottery and tiles found during an excavation of land within Wrotham Park has confirmed that the hamlet of Kitts End did exist during the 1471 Battle of Barnet – and that in fact there was probably habitation there as early as the 11th century.

An announcement that had been expected in early June about a go-ahead for the Spires shopping centre redevelopment has still not materialised, and there is still no date when work might start.

While we welcome educational use of the site, particularly if coupled with community access to the Academy’s indoor and outdoor sports and other facilities, the current proposal for 1,890 pupils plus 150 or so staff would be an over development.

High Barnet’s notoriety as a hot spot for parking fines is to be featured yet again on national television.   Footage for a new series of Dom on the Spot was filmed in the High Street highlighting Barnet Council’s refusal to even consider a short period of free parking in order to help local traders.

Planners and consultants representing the proposed Ark Pioneer Academy to be built on the site of the former Barnet Football Club stadium at Underhill, insist that a new school for almost 2,000 pupils is needed for the northern part of the Borough of Barnet.

A print of Graham Turner’s celebrated painting of a young Richard III looking apprehensively across towards the Lancastrian army at the 1471 Battle of Barnet, is to go on display at Barnet Museum to help promote the current archaeological survey to determine the precise site of the battlefield.

Building houses and apartment blocks along a narrow, sloping 3.9-acre site, where the land falls sharply by 15 metres, is not a “builder’s dream” says Linden Home’s construction director Shawn Moore.

A radical redesign has been unveiled of the proposed new Noah’s Ark children’s hospice to be built at the environment centre off Byng Road, Barnet.

A final go-ahead for construction work on a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre continues to depend on signing up an “international fashion brand”.

Residents are being consulted about the possibility of a massive extension to High Barnet’s controlled parking zone to cope with uncontrolled off-street car parking and traffic congestion following recent expansion at Barnet Hospital.

The tenth anniversary of the poisoning with radioactive polonium of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko brings back memories for an ex-Barnet journalist who reported on the role of Barnet Hospital in the story surrounding one of London’s most alarming assassinations.

A 50-acre green space, open to the public from dawn to dusk, would be one of the suggested benefits of the proposal to establish a natural burial ground on farmland behind Barnet Road and Barnet Gate Lane, Arkley.

A football team for former East Barnet grammar school boys that has expanded over the last sixty years to become a community-based amateur football club, has been celebrating the performance of its top players.

The Ark Academy network says it intends to work with planners at Barnet Council to try to meet local anxieties over proposals for a super-size, £31 million new school to be built on the site of Underhill, the former stadium of Barnet Football Club.

An environmentally-friendly natural burial ground might be developed on farmland backing on to Barnet Gate Lane, Arkley, and Mays Lane, if there is local support, and planning permission can be obtained.

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.

The combination of planning relaxations, housing demand, property prices and uncertainty as to Council intentions makes this a critical time for building in Chipping Barnet.