News from The Barnet Society

Plans to replace a semi-derelict vacant shop that has blighted Union Street for many years will go a long way towards finishing off a make-over for one of High Barnet’s historic thoroughfares.

Plans to improve one of the busiest stretches of Barnet High Street by planting trees, and providing benches and cycle hoops, have been upstaged by the arrival of a super-size black kiosk for a new smart telephone. It has been installed at precisely the point where pavement was due to be widened.

Number 89, the community-run pop-up shop selling local arts and crafts that was in the High Street until a few months ago, has reopened round the corner at 10 Union Street, and now trades under the name room 89.

Two new housing developments are changing still further the appearance of Union Street in High Barnet, which in recent years has lost shops, offices, a school and even its public house.

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.

Work is about to start in Union Street, just off Barnet High Street, on the construction of twenty-five flats for older women. The new complex, on the site of what was previously St Martha’s Convent School, will be one of the first purpose-built co-housing projects of its kind in the country.