News from The Barnet Society

Final preparations are being made for the annual Barnet Christmas Fayre on Sunday 3 December which will fill the High Street with over 100 stalls and feature a wide variety of seasonal events and attractions in nearby venues around the town centre.

High Barnet's community dance group D2D -- Dare to Dance -- are one of the groups preparing for a North London dance festival early next year. Generations Dance Day will be open to all ages and abilities with free entry at the artsdepot in North Finchley on Saturday 17 February.

BYM Capital, owners of High Barnet's shopping centre The Spires, have become insolvent. Administrators appointed by the High Court are now in charge of the company.

High Barnet is being asked to nominate its change makers --inspirational figures with local connections whose contributions to society deserve to be highlighted as part of a borough-wide celebration being organised by Create London.

Bugler Alexander Hill sounded the Last Post after wreath laying at the Remembrance Sunday service at the High Barnet war memorial at the parish church of St John the Baptist. Thirty-nine wreaths were laid on behalf of the armed services, Barnet Council and numerous local dignitaries and organisations.

Zimmer frames, crutches and surgical boots left unused in lofts and garages around Barnet are just some of the surplus mobility aids which are being rounded up and sent off to help amputees injured in the war in Ukraine thanks to the efforts of a Friern Barnet pensioner.

A government U-turn on plans for the closure of railway ticket offices across England will come as a relief to passengers, especially the elderly and the disabled, who use stations around High Barnet on the Great Northern Railway and Thameslink lines.

If a fund-raising campaign is successful, there will be more of a carnival like atmosphere at this year's Barnet Christmas Fayre to be held on Sunday 3 December with professional entertainers hopefully welcoming visitors as they walk up and down the High Street.

High Barnet's Byng Road allotments celebrate their 85th anniversary next year -- and for 66 of those years Peter Morris has been tending his plot with the same determination and enthusiasm as when he started out as a teenager.

In a break with a tradition that dates back for a century or more, Barnet Parish Church of St John the Baptist is to set up a mixed-voice choir alongside its long-standing choir of men and boys.

Ewen Hall in Wood Street was transformed for an action-packed evening when the newly established Barnet Amateur Boxing Club held its first show event attracting amateur boxers from nearby clubs in the London area. There were 13 bouts in all -- and the evening opened with some fiery engagements from ten-year-olds.

An Islamic educational charity has paid over £4 million to purchase the vacant 1,000 seat Brethren's meeting room at the Arkley end of Mays Lane, Barnet. The sale of the property, which is within the Green Belt, and which has 160 parking spaces, was completed on Friday 6 October.

Charging points for electric vehicles are to be installed in the pavements of several side roads close to Barnet town centre -- and applications are being made for even larger self-standing charge points in front of the Everyman cinema and in East Barnet village which would be partly financed through video display advertising.  Notices warn residents

A fascinating insight into the life of wealthy middle-class households who set up home in the flourishing township of New Barnet in the late 1880s has emerged after research by family historians.

Bringing to life the gaiety and rough and tumble of Barnet Fair -- said to be have been one of the the noisiest and naughtiest in Victorian London -- is the challenge facing High Barnet's amateur dramatic group, The Blue Door Theatre Company.

Within two weeks of hearing about a planning application for residential caravans on Green Belt farmland in the Dollis Valley, well over 500 objectors registered their opposition, backing a campaign mounted by residents of Mays Lane and surrounding roads.

Many of the motorists hurrying past beside the edge of Monken Hadley Common have probably never stopped to take a walk or had a chance to enjoy an historic and incomparable green space on the boundary of Greater London.

Volunteers collected over 65 kilogrammes of surplus apples from trees in the back gardens of houses in Sebright Road -- all destined for foodbanks and self-help groups across the London Borough of Barnet.

Families with young children have been moving to the London Borough of Barnet because of the strong performance of its secondary schools -- a strength recognised at the annual "Celebration of Excellence" at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School.

In his first campaign since becoming the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Chipping Barnet, Dan Tomlinson has collected over 300 signatures in a petition opposing plans to close railway station ticket offices at New Barnet and Oakleigh Park.