News from The Barnet Society

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?

After a lengthy closure the Old Court House recreation ground has a functioning café once again. A new tenant has reopened the business after a major refurbishment and is hoping that High Barnet will embrace the café culture that has proved so popular at Trent Park in Cockfosters and at Oak Hill Park in East Barnet.

High Barnet’s most popular children’s playground in the Old Court House recreation ground could become even more inviting if a new tenant can be found for the vacant park café. Barnet Council’s Commercial Directorate is offering a 15-year lease on the disused café and sitting area in an adjoining garden.

In the two years since the Barnet Society began protesting about derelict NHS buildings nothing has changed. The abandoned Marie Foster Home in Wood Street is still an eyesore, and so is the fire-ravaged former nurses’ home at Arkley.

Restoring and putting to good use Barnet’s rich heritage of historic buildings has become an increasingly challenging task which makes the story behind the project to preserve and re-open the former Red Cross building in St Albans’ Road all the more remarkable.  Ten years ago the Red Cross indicated that it intended to vacate what

Barnet’s former town hall, opposite St John’s Church, provides a positive reminder of the imaginative uses which can be found for redundant municipal property. This iconic building has now completed three years as the home of the North London Coroner’s Court and its future seems assured.

In 2011 an application to demolish the Barnet Court House and replace it with a modern block of flats was refused by the Council and that decision was subsequently upheld at appeal.