News from The Barnet Society

Barnet High Street is once again bedecked with flowering hanging baskets – their arrival was delayed by the late spring and they are still in need of some more warm weather! When in full bloom, the 19 hanging baskets will bring a real splash of colour to the High Street.

Barnet Football Club’s vacant stadium at Underhill is to be demolished to make way for a proposed new free school – Ark Pioneer Academy – that would eventually accommodate more than 1,800 pupils.

Work could start as early as January next year on High Barnet’s largest housing development since the opening of the Dollis Valley estate. If planning permission is obtained, Linden Homes plan to construct over 100 new homes on the vacant Elmbank site that extends from Barnet Road, Arkley, almost to Barnet Hospital.

Barnet Council has been accused by supporters of the Campaign for Real Ale of acting in an underhand way in rejecting an application to grant community asset protection to the now closed Old Red Lion public house at the bottom of Barnet Hill.

Six candidates have been nominated for the Chipping Barnet constituency in the general election on Thursday 7 May – a seat currently held by Theresa Villiers, who has been the Conservative MP for the constituency since 2005.

Barnet Council is being urged by the Campaign for Real Ale to prevent the demolition of the Old Red Lion public house, at the bottom of Barnet Hill, by declaring it a community asset for the use of local residents.

A group of feisty women, happy to be renowned for their stubbornness, gathered in Union Street, Barnet, for a ceremony marking the start of construction on a unique project – the first purpose-built co-housing scheme of its kind in the country.

Another of High Barnet’s oldest public houses is to close – the Old Red Lion, at the bottom of Barnet Hill, is to serve its last pint on Saturday 28 February, following its sale by the Hertford brewers McMullen and Sons Ltd for housing development.

Suggestions that the White Lion pub in St.

Catering and tourism students from Barnet and Southgate College are gaining work experience at High Barnet’s newest pop-up shop, a family-friendly tea shop that has opened in the Spires shopping centre.

Planning vote goes against Guns & Smoke.  Guns & Smoke, a new American-style bar and grill opposite Barnet parish church, has failed to obtain planning permission for its illuminated frontage in Church Passage.

High Barnet’s much-coveted green belt is to be featured in a seven-minute television documentary being filmed by students from City University’s department of journalism. Their assignment is to explore the pressure to develop green belt land around London, given the growing demand for new housing.

High Barnet’s “impossible” parking controls are forcing another independent trader out of the High Street. Hadley Hounds, a dog grooming parlour established five years ago, is having to leave and find new premises in Whetstone because difficulties over parking have proved the “final straw” for proprietor Eve Fox.

Guns & Smoke, the new American-style bar and grill opposite Barnet parish church, faces what looks like being a decisive shoot-out at Hendon Town Hall early in the new year.

A mini-roundabout and an additional zebra crossing are being proposed by Barnet Council to improve road safety for motorists and pedestrians at the junction of Wood Street and Wellhouse Lane. A £232,000 road improvement scheme prepared by the Council’s in-house consultancy Capita is now out for consultation.

For the last 50 years Barnet children have needed to go no further than Wood Street to catch a glimpse of a scene that brings to life that much-loved nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”.

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.

Green Belt surrounds Chipping Barnet on three sides, and the Barnet Society was founded in 1945 to protect it.  As London grows, we believe it – and the natural landscape adjoining it – is likely to be even more appreciated.  But while the Society’s default setting is to oppose any development on or next to

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.

Chants of “Our NHS, your NHS” echoed around the Wellhouse Lane entrance to Barnet Hospital as the People’s March for the NHS passed through Barnet on its way to Edmonton.