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.

Barely a year after JC Decaux was refused planning permission for three telecom/advertising hubs in the High Street, they’ve returned with two more. If approved, that would make four within 200 metres.

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.

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 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.

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.

To improve access for the disabled and children and visitors in wheelchairs, the main paths in and around the nature reserve at Barnet Environment Centre are to be re-laid with a rubber compound which will make them easier and safer to use.

Young and old joined in to help with High Barnet Green Beings' Sunday litter pick in and around the town centre.

Barnet Council is being asked to investigate whether restoration of the boarded up cricket pavilion in Tudor Park sports ground might be financed in part through a community infra-structure levy that will have to be paid on multi-storey blocks of flats proposed for the New Barnet former gas works site.