News from The Barnet Society

The Barnet Society is launching a Save Our High Street appeal: our town centre desperately needs more shoppers and we hope local businesses and other organisations, as well as local residents will join our campaign. Support our campaign for an hours free parking.

Once again the communities of Barnet come together on the first Sunday in December, to celebrate the huge diversity of what we have to offer in our high street and surrounding area.

Family, friends and constituents have been paying tribute to Sir Sydney Chapman, the former Conservative MP for Chipping Barnet for just over a quarter of a century, who died in early October. His funeral was held (22.10.2014) at St Mary’s Church, Lower Heyford, Oxfordshire, where he had lived for some years since his retirement from politics.

Saturday shoppers queued up in disbelief to read a bailiff’s notice posted on the front door of the Oasis coffee shop in the Spires shopping centre – the seventh business to have closed within the complex in recent months.

Barnet church has its clock back at last! For almost a month High Barnet residents looked in vain when needing to check the time, but the tower of the town’s famous landmark is resplendent once more.

Work is well underway preparing the ground for planting a wild-flower meadow which will become a major new attraction at Barnet Countryside Centre in Byng Road.

Love Barnet’s pop-up shop at 89 High Street promoting locally produced crafts and goods had what the staff said was a “fantastic” first week’s trading. Ten stockists are selling a range of products including hand-made home furnishings, jewellery, cards, soaps and oils and glass and ceramics.

Guns & Smoke, a new American-style bar and grill at the heart of the High Barnet conservation area, is announcing that it will be opening soon – possibly by mid-September – although planning permission has yet to be obtained from Barnet Council.

Face-painting, games, balloons and cups of tea were among the attractions at Barnet Police Station’s open day as a full complement from the uniformed ranks were on hand to welcome local residents, families and children.

Work is about to start in Union Street, just off Barnet High Street, on the construction of twenty-five flats for older women. The new complex, on the site of what was previously St Martha’s Convent School, will be one of the first purpose-built co-housing projects of its kind in the country.

Barnet’s bee population – and the borough’s beekeepers – are in very good shape thanks to the enthusiasm and good husbandry of the Barnet District Beekeepers Association. Membership has increased threefold in the last five years, and in September the Association will be celebrating the centenary of its annual honey show.

Descendants of the family that established the Thomas Watson Cottage Homes, which are tucked away at the end of Leecroft Road, have unveiled a commemorative stone to mark their centenary.

British Telecom reworks its ever-lasting litany of excuses and is finally being forced to admit to internet customers in High Barnet that it has no intention of honouring a much-repeated undertaking to deliver a high-speed broadband service.

After raising the staggering sum of half a million pounds, work has started on the first phase of an ambitious project to transform what was once Christ Church School into a drop-in facility for the elderly and a centre for the benefit of the wider community.

Two local history projects connecting Barnet’s past to the present day have been officially unveiled at Barnet Museum as part of its annual Tea in the Park celebration in Courthouse Gardens.

Facelift for the Spires to be finished by the spring ready for Carluccio’s restaurant to open next summer.

Even before the completion of its fitting out, an application has been made for planning permission to almost double the size of a new private hospital which is to open in Moxon Street, High Barnet. Hadley Wood Hospital is due to open shortly and will be owned and managed by a team of local specialist consultants.

Parents of children due to start school from 2016 onwards are being urged to sign a petition to support a campaign to establish a new Church of England free school for High Barnet.

Just imagine the bustle and activity of 1898 when such was the competition in the High Street of Barnet that shoppers had the choice of eleven butchers, including one pork butcher and two poultry dealers! Today only one shop remains, the Butcher’s Hook.

British Telecom has been forced to admit that there will be another lengthy delay in providing a fast broadband service to up to 3,000 High Barnet households.