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.

Barnet might have lost its football club, but another of the town’s sporting traditions is still making history: Barnet Elizabethans Rugby Football Club is about to start a year of commemorative events to celebrate its centenary.

Residents of Chipping Close were out in force to express their continuing opposition to the construction of a 100-bed Premier Inn opposite their homes on the site of Barnet Market.

The stunning success this summer of the first-ever Barnet Medieval Festival – which the organisers are planning to repeat next June – has added fresh momentum to several initiatives to celebrate the 1471 Battle of Barnet.

The controversial proposal to build a Premier Inn on the former Barnet Market site has been rejected by Barnet’s planning committee, against the planning officers’ advice. The three grounds for rejection have just been published, and the planning committee has explained why they believe the proposal would be detrimental to existing Chipping Close residents.

Paula Gabb says her much-celebrated cat Millie – known locally as Barnet’s “library cat” and latterly “Waitrose” cat – has died “peacefully” after being poorly for some time with a thyroid problem. Millie, a 17-year-old tabby, regularly stationed herself outside the Waitrose entrance in the Spires shopping centre and made friends with countless shoppers and passers-by.

Residents in four roads that were hoping to be included in the new Barnet Hospital controlled parking zone have been told they may have to wait until early next year before they can be incorporated into the scheme.

Barnet Guild of Artists’ 70th annual summer exhibition is dedicated to its founder, Gwyneth Cowing, who in 1948 brought together a group of local artists to stage their first show at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School. A water colour portrait, and some of her own paintings, take pride of place among a bumper display of 170 entries.

A campaign to restore the obelisk at Hadley Highstone that commemorates the Battle of Barnet, is one of a series of initiatives aimed at building on the success of this year Barnet Medieval Festival and the ongoing efforts to trace the precise site of the battlefield.

A competition to find the best possible site for a three-metre high bronze sculpture to commemorate the Battle of Barnet is about to be launched as part of a crowdfunding appeal.

A row of square, flat-roofed houses in Raydean Road are among the buildings in and around Barnet that are highlighted on a website that celebrates modernist and art deco architecture in the London suburbs that became known as Metro-land.

Most High Barnet residents are familiar with the Marie Foster Centre – awaiting demolition for redevelopment – but few probably realise that when opened in 1973, the 30-bed hospital in Wood Street was the first purpose-built home in the country for young people suffering from multiple sclerosis.

Local residents and nearby businesses are to be consulted over a plan to build a 100-bed care home for the elderly on the site of the former Marie Foster Centre in Wood Street, Barnet.

To help celebrate the school’s 130th anniversary, pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, Barnet, organised a wide range of events for their summer fair. Martin Russell, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Barnet, praised the school for its recent academic successes. He was welcomed by the headteacher, Violet Walker.

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.

After lying abandoned and derelict for years the former nurses’ home in Wood Street, Barnet, is to be demolished to make way for a new care home for the elderly to be built on the Marie Foster care home site.

Two teams of keep-fit enthusiasts entertained shoppers at the Spires shopping centre with a marathon session of continuous press-ups – and raised over £5,000 for charity.

Charging £3,000 to hang heraldic banners from 26 lamp standards in Barnet High Street was condemned as the latest example of the dysfunctional relationship between Barnet Council and its web of private contractors providing out-sourced services.

Such was the enthusiastic response to a real-life re-enactment of the Battle of Barnet that military re-enactors, organisers and visitors were unanimous in their hope that the first-ever Barnet Medieval Festival can become an annual event.