News from The Barnet Society

High Barnet’s struggling High Street shopping centre is facing fresh challenges: another two national chains are pulling out just as plans are announced to convert empty retail premises on the corner with St Albans Road into a house in multiple occupation.

A joint display of classic cars and vintage armoured vehicles drew record crowds to the fifth annual Barnet Classic Car show at the Army Reserve Centre in St Albans Road, Barnet.

Barnet’s annual Classic Car Show on Saturday (30 June) is to be a joint display alongside vintage armoured vehicles to mark National Armed Forces Day. More classic cars and motorbikes will be taking part because of the extra space available in the parade ground at the Army Reserve Centre, in St Albans Road, Barnet.

Barnet High Street is flying heraldic banners from the Wars of the Roses to promote the town’s first-ever medieval festival which is being held this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 10 June) to commemorate the 1471 Battle of Barnet.

A three-week public consultation has opened on a new scheme of improvements to the High Street – and it’s vital that residents support this chance-in-a-generation to rejuvenate it.

If Barnet Council gives approval, 26 hand-painted heraldic banners are to be hung along Barnet High Street to promote the Barnet Medieval Festival – a weekend of medieval displays and re-enactments of scenes from the battles of St Albans (1461) and Barnet (1471) to be held at the Byng Road playing fields on Saturday and

 The coat of arms of Henry VI is the latest to be painted as part of the Battle of Barnet Project – and it is one of 30 heraldic banners that it is hoped will be hung along the High Street to celebrate Barnet’s role in the Wars of the Roses.

Hands-on experience in a great variety of trades, sports and occupations was all part of a careers day organised at the Pavilion School, in Chandos Avenue,Whetstone, which provides support and education for Barnet children who are outside mainstream education.

Replica copies of four of the heraldic banners of the dukes, earls and knights who fought in the 1471 Battle of Barnet are now on display in the Spires shopping centre.

High Barnet’s most prominent “ghost advertisement” – high up on a side wall in the High Street – is creating quite a flurry of interest and might well be up for listing as being of historical interest.

After remaining empty and abandoned for over a year, High Barnet’s historic Brake Shear House, just off the High Street, has been brought back to life as Nightingales Emporium, a collaborative selling point for a group of artists and entrepreneurs.

A van producing and selling authentic Roman pizzas is helping to kick start the development of what is fast becoming a popular food court outside the Stapylton Road entrance to the Spires shopping centre.

Shanly Homes, which purchased the semi-derelict Brake Shear House workshops off Barnet High Street earlier this year, has appointed new architects to review the plans for redeveloping the site. Planning permission was granted to the previous owners, Wrenbridge, to build 32 flats, eight semi-detached houses and workspace for 40 or more employees.

End of an era.  Butcher’s Hook, the last remaining butcher’s shop in High Street, Barnet, has ceased trading and the premises are for sale or to let.

Barnet High Street’s historic Brake Shear House complex, which is boarded up ready for demolition, has gained a temporary reprieve, and former tenants of workshops and offices are being offered fresh short-term leases.

Cameras, smart phones and tablets will be out in force to capture images of the many much-admired and much-loved models that will be on display at the fourth annual Barnet Market classic car show on Saturday 10 June.

CHIPPING BARNET HIGH STREET – PROPOSED PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS: BARNET COUNCIL PUBLIC CONSULTATION, 28 MARCH – 20 APRIL 2017 Comments by the Barnet Society, April 2017 The Barnet Society supports the general intention of the latest Council proposals.

Members of Chipping Barnet Town Team have given their backing to Barnet Council’s plans to widen one side of the High Street pavement – from the Post Office to just beyond the entrance to the Spires shopping centre – despite criticism from some residents in nearby streets.

Plans to improve one of the busiest stretches of Barnet High Street by planting trees, and providing benches and cycle hoops, have been upstaged by the arrival of a super-size black kiosk for a new smart telephone. It has been installed at precisely the point where pavement was due to be widened.

Mitchells and Butlers say they have created ten new jobs following the conversion of the Red Lion public house into a Stonehouse pizza and carvery. The Mayor of Barnet, Councillor David Longstaff, officially re-opened High Barnet’s landmark public house, at the top of Barnet Hill, after a four-week closure.