News from The Barnet Society

An application has been made for planning permission to build three flats on the site of the former Victoria Bakery in Barnet High Street -- the shop doorway that was said to have been the location where Charles Dickens imagined Oliver Twist meeting the Artful Dodger.

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 planning application that had been expected several months ago to build blocks of flats around High Barnet tube station has been delayed further amid speculation about the future of several other similar developments proposed by Transport for London.

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.

Years of campaigning to preserve the Whalebones woodland and farmland in Wood Street paid off when Barnet Council's planning committee rejected an application to build 152 new houses and flats.  Strong local opposition to the loss of one of High Barnet’s precious green spaces was cited by the committee chairman, Councillor Shimon Ryde, when he used

"We've not only survived but managed to thrive during lockdown" say the 26 residents of High Barnet's pioneering cohousing project for older women which opened four years ago in Union Street.

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.

A renewed attempt to replace a much-loathed eyesore in Union Street, High Barnet, with new housing is finally holding out the prospect of succeeding.

Years spent walking the dog on Hadley Green and in Hadley Woods and King George's Field was the inspiration for director and writer Paul Morrison whose new film 23 Walks, starring Alison Steadman, is to have its UK premiere at Barnet Everyman cinema.

Paintings and drawings on display in the Spires shopping centre are the work of Barnet children who have been isolating at home during the virus pandemic - and some of whom are still too anxious to return to school.

A community garden in New Barnet where passers-by can help themselves to vegetables, fruit and herbs is the first of what might become several similar ventures if the self-help group Incredible Edible Barnet can find sufficient volunteers.

Volunteers are getting prepared for a High Barnet litter pick on the last Sunday in September.

Plans to build a line of tower blocks on the former gas works site at New Barnet were roundly condemned when Barnet Council's planning committee unanimously rejected an application for almost twice as many flats as previously agreed.

A newly formed team of volunteers has started picking and collecting surplus fruit across the Borough of Barnet so that unwanted produce can be diverted to food banks and distributed by other organisations helping the needy. Barnet Community Harvesters has been established by Daniella Levene.