News from The Barnet Society

Delihouse might be the smallest shop in The Spires – and only opened in the summer – but proprietor Jonathan Beecham is already expanding a delicatessen business which started with a Saturday stall at Barnet Market.

"We've not only survived but managed to thrive during lockdown" say the 26 residents of High Barnet's pioneering cohousing project for older women which opened four years ago in Union Street.

Nearby residents have been given an assurance that the design of the new Premier Inn planned for the historic site of Barnet Market will respect the local conservation area and will be in keeping with terraced houses across the road in Chipping Close.

If planning approval is given, a Premier Inn hotel and restaurant is to be built on the historic St Albans Road site of Barnet’s much reduced stalls market.

“Pineapples, two for a pound!” – father and son David and Tyler Bone have both been shouting out prices for fruit and vegetables at Barnet Market since before they were ten, and together they are carrying on a tradition that was started by David’s father Albert in the 1950s.

Celebrations along the high streets of Britain have been few and far between in the last few years, so the official re-opening of Barnet Market after its recent make-over was just the kind of fillip local traders have been crying out for.

After a seven-week absence Barnet Market is about to return to its original site which has now been resurfaced and smartened up after a £100,000 improvement scheme. Traders hope the first Saturday market – on 9 November – on what in years gone by was Barnet’s cattle market is the end of six years’ disruption.

Rarely has the presence of a mechanical digger been welcomed with such enthusiasm as greeted its arrival on the site of Barnet Market, heralding the start of a long-promised and much-delayed resurfacing and improvement.

While work is underway resurfacing Barnet Market, its temporary home is the area around the bandstand outside Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre. Shoppers visiting the market on Saturday morning (21.9.2013) were handed leaflets announcing that at last the William Pears property group is to start its £100,000 upgrade of the site.

While work is under way resurfacing Barnet Market its temporary home will be the area around the bandstand outside the Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre. hoppers visiting the market on Saturday morning (21.9.2013) were handed leaflets announcing that at last the William Pears property group is to start its £100,000 upgrade of the site.

Barnet Market’s improved site should be open for business by September, ready to attract new stall holders. Tenders are being invited for a £100,000 upgrade of Barnet Market, which the new owners say should be ready to trade in much improved surroundings by September.

Resurfacing the site of Barnet market and installing basic facilities for the stallholders is the first test of the William Pears Group, new owners of the Spires shopping centre.

Planning applications have been made for the Barnet Market site - one for improvements to the site for market use and the other for use as a car park on non-market days.  The scandalously-neglected site will be due for a new surface, storage and welfare facilities for stallholders.