News from The Barnet Society

Separate cycle lanes up and down Barnet Hill - an ambition ridiculed for so long by Barnet councillors - may have become a step closer as a result of the government's decision to pump £2 billion into schemes to encourage cycling and walking as a way of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

In a dramatic U-turn, Barnet Council has dropped its plan to temporarily close Barnet High Street to through traffic as a way of ensuring safe social distancing for pedestrians and shoppers.

Barnet High Street is to be closed temporarily to all through traffic from the last week of August to ensure there is safe social distancing on the narrow pavement beside the parish church of St John the Baptist.

Ambitious plans are being drawn up to celebrate the 550th anniversary next year of the Battle of Barnet.

By installing two male mannequins dressed in white in the Old Courthouse Recreation Ground, Barnet Lawns Bowls Club has managed to frighten off crows that have been digging holes in the fine turf of their two bowling greens.

Work has started clearing the site off Rowley Lane, Boreham Wood, for the construction of the new Sky Studios Elstree, which were granted planning approval by Hertsmere Borough Council earlier this month.

By shortening its route through New Barnet and High Barnet, Transport for London is hoping to give "a new lease of life" to the 384 bus service, by ensuring faster travelling times and by providing a new direct connection to Edgware.

Swift awareness week has been judged a success by admirers of High Barnet's rare, elusive summer visitors who have again take up residence under the eaves of houses or in nest boxes.

Barnet Council is appealing for volunteers to give advice and support to shoppers and the public on safe social distancing as lockdown is eased in High Barnet and other town centres across the borough. Online training is being offered.

Fred Jarvis, Barnet's most celebrated trade union leader - and a New Barnet resident for well over 60 years - has died at the age of 95.

Customers were welcomed back in Barnet High Street and the Spires shopping centre on the first day of the easing of lockdown restrictions on shopping. Most of the leading chains were open for business.

For the first time since the start of the coronavirus lockdown at the end of March, High Barnet's stalls market is back in business, leading the way for the re-opening of shops in the Spires shopping centre on Monday 15 June.

Barnet Cycling Campaign is joining other groups in urging improvements in highways safety and traffic management if Barnet Council decides to give the go ahead for a massive housing scheme at the former gas works site in New Barnet.

 Scores of small businesses and traders who store goods, tools and equipment in a container yard claim their future has been totally overlooked and ignored by Transport for London in the plan to build 292 flats on land around High Barnet tube station.

Transport for London's plan to extend the route of the 384 Cockfosters to High Barnet bus service to Edgware, via Arkley and Mill Hill (Apex Corner), is meeting strong opposition because it would take a more direct route and serve far fewer streets.

Swifts have again been seen swooping and squealing high overhead in High Barnet -- aerial summer visitors that are an especially welcome sight in Fitzjohn Avenue where at least two pairs are thought to have chosen sites for nests.

After almost a year's trial and error, local sculptor John Somerville finally feels ready to display his clay model of High Barnet's feline celebrity, Millie the Waitrose Cat, before she is cast into a small bronze statue.

Neve Mayes,star trumpet player at Dame Alice Owen's School, marked the start and finish of the Victory in Europe Day two minute silence for residents in Fitzjohn Avenue, with her mother making sure the timings were correct.

Church services streamed live online have become a regular Sunday morning point of contact for worshippers staying at home under lockdown. Christ Church, High Barnet, is trying to widen its reach by inviting the public to post requests for prayers.

A pub on wheels offering a freshly pulled pint of stout delivered straight to the door is proving to be a popular lockdown innovation for a High Barnet landlord.