News from The Barnet Society

Increased unemployment and rising hardship due to covid-19 are putting pressure on food banks across the country: 15 new food banks have opened across the London Borough of Barnet since the start of the pandemic.

A two-month delay in opening a purpose-built new ward for covid-19 patients increased pressure at Barnet Hospital as medical staff struggled to cope with the start of the second wave of the pandemic in the first weeks of the autumn.

National Grid has applied to Barnet Council for permission to demolish New Barnet's redundant gasholder saying it is a safety risk and wants to free up the land for residential development.

A medieval timber roof discovered above a vacant shop in Barnet High Street might be as old or even older than the famous hammer-beam roof at Westminster Hall, the oldest building at the Houses of Parliament.

  Friends of Barnet Market are welcoming the continued presence of the twice-weekly market during the second lockdown -- and are especially pleased with the success of a new fresh fish stall from Ipswich.

Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School is helping to promote National Road Safety Week with a large banner close to the school entrance at the busy road junction of Barnet Hill and Meadway.

Women are increasingly taking over from men in cultivating allotments - a national trend which is certainly being reflected at the popular Byng Road allotments in High Barnet.

A socially distanced two-minute silence was observed at the war memorial at Barnet parish church to mark Remembrance Sunday.

Without him knowing what was happening, past and present pupils at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School, Barnet, were voting secretly for their popular history teacher and sixth form tutor, Marc Fielder, to become the 2020 London Secondary School Teacher of the Year.

Going to the pictures once or even several times a week used to be commonplace among the older generation...but with the closure of numerous cinemas across the London Borough of Barnet memories are fading fast.

An application has been made for planning permission to build three flats on the site of the former Victoria Bakery in Barnet High Street -- the shop doorway that was said to have been the location where Charles Dickens imagined Oliver Twist meeting the Artful Dodger.

Bus services on the 383 route are now running directly from Barnet to Finchley Memorial Hospital in response to an appeal by the Mayor of London to ensure that Transport for London responds to the redirection of hospital patients during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Specialists in medieval buildings have expressed amazement and delight at the discovery in Barnet High Street of an original timber framed roof that might date back to the 14th century or earlier.

A planning application that had been expected several months ago to build blocks of flats around High Barnet tube station has been delayed further amid speculation about the future of several other similar developments proposed by Transport for London.

A new brasserie and retail space - to be called Botannika - is to take over the former Carluccio's restaurant at the entrance to the Spires shopping centre in High Street, Barnet.

Polish trained chef Lukasz Szumski is planning to add one or two specialities from his grandfather's recipes to a traditional English menu at the Sebright Arms in Alston Road which has just re-opened as a gastro pub and sports bar after several weeks closure.

Years of campaigning to preserve the Whalebones woodland and farmland in Wood Street paid off when Barnet Council's planning committee rejected an application to build 152 new houses and flats.  Strong local opposition to the loss of one of High Barnet’s precious green spaces was cited by the committee chairman, Councillor Shimon Ryde, when he used

"We've not only survived but managed to thrive during lockdown" say the 26 residents of High Barnet's pioneering cohousing project for older women which opened four years ago in Union Street.

Searching for a celebrity connected wth all 272 tube stations on the London Underground has been a lockdown artistic venture for High Barnet cartoonist and caricaturist Simon Ellinas. He hopes his choices for tube stations in the London Borough of Barnet will become a talking point.

Plastic barriers and traps have been set up across Monken Hadley Common to safeguard great crested newts which might be threatened by the construction of a new water main.