News from The Barnet Society

These are critical times for London’s Green Belt. But Barnet still has many open spaces where the illusion of countryside is remarkably unspoiled. Eight of them – all in Totteridge or Mill Hill – are on new videos that you can view on the website of the London Green Belt Council (LGBC).

On Tuesday 13 July, the Barnet Society held its first Open Meeting on topical local issues via Zoom. Around 50 members of the Society and general public participated. This is what we discussed.

Chipping Barnet is a great base for some glorious countryside walks, and the best are described in Rambles Round Barnet – two volumes published by the Barnet Society. The good news is that Volume I has just been reprinted in a limited edition.

The Barnet Society’s AGM on 1st July gave me the opportunity to highlight the range of work we have done in the past, and continue to do, to enhance Barnet’s green environment.

Local residents are being urged by the Barnet Society to support a campaign to make sure historic footpaths are properly registered so as to ensure they are protected for the future as public rights of way. Unless favourite footpaths and walks are included in the new 2026 definitive map they might be lost forever.

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.

Catering and tourism students from Barnet and Southgate College are gaining work experience at High Barnet’s newest pop-up shop, a family-friendly tea shop that has opened in the Spires shopping centre.

High Barnet’s “impossible” parking controls are forcing another independent trader out of the High Street. Hadley Hounds, a dog grooming parlour established five years ago, is having to leave and find new premises in Whetstone because difficulties over parking have proved the “final straw” for proprietor Eve Fox.

A children’s skating rink was one of the many attractions at the two-day Christmas in the Park at the Old Courthouse recreation ground in High Barnet. A series of events have been held this year since the reopening of the Old Courthouse cafe, but this was by far the most ambitious to date.