News from The Barnet Society

An award-winning engineer in the development of offshore wind technologies, visiting professor Emily Spearman – who grew up in High Barnet – returned to Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School to present prizes at the annual celebration of excellence.

Barnet’s Crown Post Office, which is about to become a franchise operation, will move across the High Street at some point in November to new premises in a former toy shop.

A massive crane has been brought in by contractors to help install scaffolding and internal braces to stabilise the walls of a large Georgian house on Hadley Green which was gutted in a disastrous fire over the May bank holiday.

A little over a year after being elected Labour MP for Chipping Barnet, Dan Tomlinson has been promoted to become a junior minister at the Treasury. In a reshuffle announced by the Prime Minister on the day MPs returned to Westminster, Mr Tomlinson was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

Members of Barnet Guild of Artists are preparing for their 74th annual show in October – in what might become their final year in their unique and much-loved art studio.

Dory’s, High Barnet’s celebrated family run cafe which provided refreshments and a warm welcome for generations of satisfied customers, has closed for business after the retirement of its proprietors Guiliano Cardosi and Angela Casali.

Barnet Museum’s trustees have had to withdraw their bid to save High Barnet’s historic Tudor Hall for community use because of a lack of financial resources to repair and then maintain the building.

Mock battles with weapons made from foam were one of the highlights for children attending the annual Barnet Medieval Festival at its new and enlarged site on farmland in Galley Lane.

The UOE Store group which operates a chain of franchised Post Offices around London and the Home Counties – including at Potters Bar and East Finchley -- is to take over the operation of Barnet Post Office.

Fire engines and crews from around north London were called to a massive fire which engulfed one of the large Georgian houses beside Hadley Green. Such was the ferocity of the blaze that for several hours water had to be pumped from Brewers’ Pond just across the green.

Tucked away at a wildlife site in the Barnet green belt is an enchanting array of community gardens which were developed in the 1950s, and which played a part in the early development of organic gardening.

Moving the Barnet Medieval Festival – to be held on Saturday and Sunday June 7 and 8 – to a new site on farmland off Galley Lane has attracted heightened interest among military re-enactors who are looking forward to having more space for Wars of the Roses camp sites and displays.

There could hardly have been a better way to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day than to climb the tower at Barnet parish church, admire the view, and then round off the visit with a glass of Pimm’s or a piece of cake and a cup of tea.

Planning applications have been approved for changes to several of the iconic buildings at the historic heart of High Barnet’s conservation area. Work is to start in late April on a “makeover” at the town’s oldest coaching inn, The Mitre.

Barnet Post Office is to become a franchise operation along with another 107 crown offices across the country where the Post Office is to cease its own management and staffing. Applications to run these businesses as a franchise are currently being considered. New owners could be in place by the end of September.

Recently restored and repaired medieval banners commemorating the 1471 Battle of Barnet will once again decorate the High Street during the summer months after Barnet Museum intervened with financial support.

Information boards celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the London Borough of Barnet are on display at Barnet Museum’s shop in The Spires shopping centre and at the Chipping Barnet Library.

Barnet’s popular roadside cafe, The Hole in the Wall, will have a prominent position on the Great North Road (A1000) if Barnet Council approves plans for redevelopment of the Meadow Works industrial estate at Pricklers Hill.

Claire Fisher’s first play – Mary Livingstone, I Presume? – tickles the audience with a joyous array of gossip and small talk between the Hadley Green gentry of yesteryear, their servants and the townspeople of Barnet. The Bull Theatre was packed with highly appreciative audiences for the latest production by the Blue Door Theatre Company.

Birt Acres, a key figure in the invention of British movies, lived and worked in Chipping Barnet. His 1897 short Band Marching down a Street is one of very few to survive from the earliest days of film. Local history investigation has convinced me that it was shot in Stapylton Road.