News from The Barnet Society

Among the highlights at the annual commemoration day service for Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School were vocals by one of the youngest pupils and another by a past student whose musical training in Barnet inspired her to become an accomplished soprano.

Twice as many Wars of the Roses heraldic banners will be hung from lamp standards along Barnet High Street this summer – just one of the attractions planned to commemorate the Battle of Barnet, and to promote a repeat of last year’s highly-successful Barnet Medieval Festival.

Ark Pioneer Academy, built on the site of the Underhill football stadium, opens in September Ark Pioneer Academy, High Barnet’s new secondary school opening in September, has started holding drop in sessions for potential parents and pupils – heightening the debate about its impact on other nearby schools.

Barnet Guild of Artists’ 70th annual summer exhibition is dedicated to its founder, Gwyneth Cowing, who in 1948 brought together a group of local artists to stage their first show at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School. A water colour portrait, and some of her own paintings, take pride of place among a bumper display of 170 entries.

To help celebrate the school’s 130th anniversary, pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, Barnet, organised a wide range of events for their summer fair. Martin Russell, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Barnet, praised the school for its recent academic successes. He was welcomed by the headteacher, Violet Walker.

Seventy pupils spent six months preparing and rehearsing for a spectacular production of The Sound of Music at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, Barnet. “It’s a fabulous musical for a girls’ school to present,” said the director Jennifer Ford, head of drama and performing arts.

Violet Walker, the new head teacher at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, has every justification for her assertion that she felt instantly at home on taking up the head-ship at the start of the new academic year in September.

Queen Elizabeth I’s charter of 1573 provided for ‘boys and youth’, but it was not until 1888 that Barnet got a school for girls.  Its oldest buildings are not just a gentle monument to a pioneering educational movement, but fine examples of the Arts and Crafts style.