News from The Barnet Society

Planning applications have been approved for changes to several of the iconic buildings at the historic heart of High Barnet’s conservation area. Work is to start in late April on a “makeover” at the town’s oldest coaching inn, The Mitre.

A massive pile of rubble, beams and planks was all that was left of Barnet’s blot of the landscape – the derelict nurses’ home for the former Victoria Maternity Hospital in Wood Street. Heavy mechanical equipment moved into the Marie Foster Centre site just before Christmas and the demolition was completed within a day.

Internal fixtures and fittings are being added to a 100-seat extension to the Roman Catholic Church in Union Street, ready for its re-consecration by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, on Sunday 3 September. Seating capacity at the Church of Mary Immaculate and St Gregory the Great is being increased from 240 to 340.

Plans to replace a semi-derelict vacant shop that has blighted Union Street for many years will go a long way towards finishing off a make-over for one of High Barnet’s historic thoroughfares.

After years of neglect and decay, Historic England has commissioned a detailed survey of the work required to repair and conserve Barnet’s historic physic well, in Well Approach, just a short walk from Barnet Hospital.

Yet again NHS Property Services appears to be in a state of indecision about the future of the derelict Marie Foster home that continues to blight High Barnet’s Wood Street conservation area.

High Barnet’s landmark public house, the Red Lion at the top of Barnet Hill, will be closed for most of January so that it can be refurbished ready for re-opening as an upmarket eatery.

As work continues constructing an extension to the Roman Catholic church in Union Street, Barnet, mass and other services are being held in neighbouring churches and halls. Rapidly rising attendances, often resulting in parishioners having to stand, especially on holy days, have required extensive rebuilding of the church.

Completing the majestic row of Norway Maple and London Plane trees that line Barnet Hill – and provide such a magnificent entrance to the town – might become possible following a generous donation to the Barnet Society.

In a first for schools in the London Borough of Barnet, the Pavilion study centre in Meadway, High Barnet, is offering vulnerable and excluded school children the opportunity to get an entry level qualification in horticulture.

The purchase by a property company of Barnet’s former British Legion hall at the corner of Moxon Street and Tapster Street has opened up for residential redevelopment another swathe of land immediately to the east of the High Street.

Number 89, the community-run pop-up shop selling local arts and crafts that was in the High Street until a few months ago, has reopened round the corner at 10 Union Street, and now trades under the name room 89.

Teachers, parents and volunteers are hard at work trying to convert an area of neglected woodland into an outdoor classroom for pupils at the Pavilion Study Centre in Meadway, High Barnet.

One of High Barnet’s worst eyesores, the derelict former nurses’ home opposite the Arkley public house, is to be demolished to make way for a housing scheme that aims to provide approximately 100 new homes.

After years of campaigning and fund-raising, work has finally started on the construction of new headquarters and facilities for the Barnet Countryside Centre in Byng Road.

Barnet church has its clock back at last! For almost a month High Barnet residents looked in vain when needing to check the time, but the tower of the town’s famous landmark is resplendent once more.

Work is well underway preparing the ground for planting a wild-flower meadow which will become a major new attraction at Barnet Countryside Centre in Byng Road.

Work is about to start in Union Street, just off Barnet High Street, on the construction of twenty-five flats for older women. The new complex, on the site of what was previously St Martha’s Convent School, will be one of the first purpose-built co-housing projects of its kind in the country.

After raising the staggering sum of half a million pounds, work has started on the first phase of an ambitious project to transform what was once Christ Church School into a drop-in facility for the elderly and a centre for the benefit of the wider community.

Feasibility study begins on future use of abandoned Marie Foster Home: could it become the site of a new GP surgery for High Barnet?