News from The Barnet Society

A new tee shirt commemorating the 555th anniversary of the Battle of Barnet will be on sale at the annual Barnet Medieval Festival over the weekend, on Saturday and Sunday June 6 and 7.

Residents around Mays Lane are anxious to attract support for a community bid to take over the derelict former Quinta Youth Club which has been put up for sale by Barnet Council for £300,000. Local groups have until October to submit offers and proposals to the council. Several eligible community interest organisations have already expressed interest.

Cartoons and caricatures filled the front of the North London Hospice shop in Barnet High Street at the launch of an expanded book shop – all in aid of a new fund-raising push.

After the loss of several pubs around High Barnet in recent weeks, work has finally started on major repairs to the Black Horse in Wood Street, and it is due to re-open in mid-June after being closed since last September.

Barnet’s newly-elected Green Party councillor, Charli Thompson – who lives in High Barnet – says her priority will be to tackle issues surrounding adult social care and disabilities rather than get involved in party political infighting.

An historic whalebones arch beside Wood Street, High Barnet, has had to be encased in scaffolding after the owners of Whalebones House feared it might collapse and cause an injury to passersby.

Violet Walker led her final commemoration day service as head teacher of Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ ahead of her retirement at the end of the summer term.

A dramatic backdrop at the RAF Museum at Hendon provided the setting for a marathon election count which upended local politics as the Labour Party haemorrhaged seats and Barnet Council slipped to no overall control. Labour and the Conservatives finished with 31 seats each.

Painting and caring for the Battle of Barnet banners which are displayed along the High Street each summer is an historic legacy for the town which volunteers at Barnet Museum hope might gain international recognition.

Such was the success and respect for Barnet’s former weekly newspaper, The Barnet Press, that a century ago it published an emergency edition on sale each evening in central London during the 1926 General Strike.

Barnet Market stalwart David Bone, who has been selling fruit and vegetables since he started as a boy at the age of seven helping on his father’s stall, has been awarded a 2026 Borough of Barnet Civic Award for Lifetime Achievement.

When Charles Dickens was forced the spend the night at the Red Lion in Barnet he faced some harsh truths – a challenging story line delivered with style and conviction by the cast of Between the Lines, which had its first night at The Bull Theatre in a run of sell-out performances.

A planning dispute over an unsuccessful bid to build a large new house within the Monken Hadley conservation area has resulted in Barnet Council declaring a woodland tree preservation order on the whole site.

A blue plaque has been installed outside a house in Calvert Road to draw attention to an ongoing dispute between residents and Barnet Council over the painting of double yellow line parking restrictions at the junction with Sebright Road.

A job club is being established at the Hope Corner Community Centre in Mays Lane, Barnet, offering three sessions a week aimed at giving advice on employment and training and a chance to learn new skills.

Two ponds at North Middlesex Golf Club in Friern Barnet Lane are to be cleared of silt and enlarged to improve flood management after heavy rainfall. Water storage capacity along Blacketts Brook, which flows through the golf course and includes the two ponds, is to be increased at a cost of £340,000.

A controversial plan to build up to 230 houses and an 80-bed care home on a former pig farm at Arkley was featured by ITV News London in a report ahead of May’s council elections about the political arguments surrounding the development of green belt land.

This swathe of Green Belt will be mostly built over if current plans are approved. And within Barnet, dozens of so-called ‘Grey Belt’ sites are being targetted for new homes (few of which are likely to be affordable). The Labour Council promises to create a Regional Park, which could prevent that. This should be an issue in our local election in May – but do voters know or care?

Stopping outside a house in a quiet residential street near Oakleigh Park, East Barnet, was mission accomplished for London Ambulance administrative officer David Sleep who is a lover of history and a great supporter of English Heritage blue plaques honouring the lives of famous people.

A two-year struggle to keep going amid the disruption caused by ending up in the middle of a construction site has finally defeated the landlady of the aptly named Builders Arms in New Barnet.