News from The Barnet Society

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.

A plan to widen the pavement on one side of Barnet High Street, from the Post Office to just beyond the entrance to the Spires shopping centre, is about to go out for public consultation.

Brilliant sunshine and crystal blue skies put some added sparkle into the annual Barnet Christmas Fayre which filled the High Street with a wide variety of stalls and plenty of seasonal cheer.

A traffic management experiment at the junction of Wood Street and Barnet High Street is causing a headache for some drivers. There is currently no left turn from Wood Street into High Street, and no corresponding right turn in front of the parish church from High Street into Wood Street.

“Well-behaved dogs welcome” is the message that dog lovers are hoping they will hear from more and more of the cafes, restaurants and public houses along the High Street in High Barnet.

Years of friendly rivalry over which shop in Barnet High Street has the longest record of continuous service seems to have been finally resolved. Documents unearthed by Peter Wanders suggest his shoe shop has been in business for longer than Victoria Bakery.

Support for Barnet Market’s annual classic car show has proved so strong that it has become a showcase event for the increasingly-popular Barnet Classic Car Club. Thirty cars assemble each May beside the market, and around the Spires bandstand, providing an engrossing spectacle for classic car enthusiasts.

“The boys dun good” was the general consensus of passers-by as three High Barnet seniors spent 16 man hours giving the Church Passage bench a much-needed wash and brush-up.

Barnet is living up to its fame in Cockney rhyming slang: a survey shows there are more hairdressing salons in the London borough Barnet than in any other part of capital, except for the West End.

A guarded welcome has been given by the Barnet Society to plans for a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre. Barnet Council is to be asked to give planning permission for a two-storey fashion store and three new restaurants.

A two-storey, 24,000-square-foot new fashion store – replacing four existing shop units – will become the centrepiece of a new-look Spires shopping centre if planning permission is obtained from Barnet Council.

Plans for a five-storey block of flats and a three-storey office block are the main features of an extensive residential and commercial redevelopment that will reshape the townscape behind shops in Barnet High Street.

When workmen removed the last wooden panels covering up tiling on the walls of 89 High Street, Barnet, they were able to solve the mystery surrounding the painting of a dairy maid.