News from The Barnet Society

A packed programme has been arranged for this year’s Barnet Christmas Fair on Sunday 7 December when, instead of traffic, there will be music and dancing in the High Street and a vast array of stalls and attractions in nearby venues.

Once again the communities of Barnet come together on the first Sunday in December, to celebrate the huge diversity of what we have to offer in our high street and surrounding area.

Just imagine the bustle and activity of 1898 when such was the competition in the High Street of Barnet that shoppers had the choice of eleven butchers, including one pork butcher and two poultry dealers! Today only one shop remains, the Butcher’s Hook.

The Friends of Barnet Market have orgainsied a series of events this Spring to encourage new shoppers to visit the Market site. The market was reopened at the historic site a few months ago and is now increasingly vibrant with new stalls joining all the time.

All the fun of the fair filled the High Street for the annual Barnet Christmas Fair, which many judged was the most ambitious and best supported since the event was first held twenty years ago.

Celebrations along the high streets of Britain have been few and far between in the last few years, so the official re-opening of Barnet Market after its recent make-over was just the kind of fillip local traders have been crying out for.

After a seven-week absence Barnet Market is about to return to its original site which has now been resurfaced and smartened up after a £100,000 improvement scheme. Traders hope the first Saturday market – on 9 November – on what in years gone by was Barnet’s cattle market is the end of six years’ disruption.

Rarely has the presence of a mechanical digger been welcomed with such enthusiasm as greeted its arrival on the site of Barnet Market, heralding the start of a long-promised and much-delayed resurfacing and improvement.

While work is underway resurfacing Barnet Market, its temporary home is the area around the bandstand outside Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre. Shoppers visiting the market on Saturday morning (21.9.2013) were handed leaflets announcing that at last the William Pears property group is to start its £100,000 upgrade of the site.

While work is under way resurfacing Barnet Market its temporary home will be the area around the bandstand outside the Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre. hoppers visiting the market on Saturday morning (21.9.2013) were handed leaflets announcing that at last the William Pears property group is to start its £100,000 upgrade of the site.

Barnet Market’s improved site should be open for business by September, ready to attract new stall holders. Tenders are being invited for a £100,000 upgrade of Barnet Market, which the new owners say should be ready to trade in much improved surroundings by September.

Resurfacing the site of Barnet market and installing basic facilities for the stallholders is the first test of the William Pears Group, new owners of the Spires shopping centre.

A fresh start for retailing in Chipping Barnet: the Spires shopping centre has been purchased by the William Pears Group, one of Britain’s biggest privately-owned property groups which keeps a low profile but has its roots in north London.  Contracts have been exchanged and the sale of the shopping centre by UBS Triton is due

Planning applications have been made for the Barnet Market site - one for improvements to the site for market use and the other for use as a car park on non-market days.  The scandalously-neglected site will be due for a new surface, storage and welfare facilities for stallholders.