News from The Barnet Society

Barnet Borough Council is back firmly under Conservative control after the Labour Party failed to make its much-anticipated breakthrough and ended up losing five seats in the council elections.

Footfall in the Spires shopping centre is up by over 50 per cent in the first three months of this year – just one of the statistics the management are quoting to squash rumours that two leading tenants, the H&M fashion store and Carluccio’s restaurant, are thinking of pulling out.

A double-brush Hertfordshire hedge – re-laid in a way passed on by a Romany gipsy who lived at Welham Green – is the latest addition to the Barnet Environment Centre in Byng Road. John Sawkins and his son David have spent the winter months relaying hedges around the boundaries of the environment centre.

A deep, sometimes noisy divide opened up at the Barnet Society’s election hustings over a wide range of contentious local issues including the need for affordable housing, concern over an increasing number of empty homes, the outsourcing of services to Capita and the demand for free town centre parking.

The launch of Barnet’s teenage market – planned for Easter Saturday – is a step closer with the purchase of twenty stalls that will fill the bandstand area in front of the Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre.

A sing song going through favourites of yester-year is a highlight at a Barnet hairdressing salon when 102-year-old Greta Nellie Druce pays her weekly visit to have her hair done.

A long-running campaign by the Barnet Society to persuade Transport for London to run a bus service from High Barnet tube station to Barnet Hospital and the Spires shopping centre has won the support of Councillor Richard Cornelius, leader of Barnet Council.

Preparations are well underway for the annual Barnet Christmas Fayre on Sunday 3 December – including elves rehearsing their dance routines for their production, Twas the Night Before Christmas, to be staged at the Bull Theatre.

High Barnet’s police station will close to the public by the end of the year along with 36 other police stations across London where the Metropolitan Police is withdrawing a front counter service.

Barnet market stall holders are delighted by the news that the managing agents for the Spires shopping centre are planning to move the twice-weekly stalls market to the paved area between Waitrose and the bandstand.

A service to institute and induct its new vicar, the Reverend Andy Rimmer, was described as a moment to celebrate the commitment shown by Christ Church, in St Albans Road, to reach out to the High Barnet community.

Roads running between High Barnet and New Barnet merge together almost seamlessly today, but in the 1930s, when farmland still separated the two towns, the footpath up to the shops in the High Street was through fields filled with cows.

To the dismay of its owner, Barnet Council has refused planning permission for a semi-derelict shop in Union Street, High Barnet, to be demolished and replaced with either a two-bedroom house or two one-bedroom flats.

Generations of Barnet children have enjoyed a trip on the miniature railway that circles the Wood Street garden of Ian Johnson, a well-known retired doctor and skilled model engineer, famed his collection of model steam engines.

Six months to install a mini-roundabout – an entry perhaps for the Guinness Book of Records – but worth the wait if safety and traffic flow improves at one of High Barnet’s notorious traffic junctions. Work has finally been completed on road realignment and resurfacing at the junction of Wellhouse Lane and Wood Street.

Barnet High Street was lined with well-wishers cheering on the 30 classic cars that made their way to the market and bandstand to take part in the fourth annual show held by the Barnet Classic Car Club.

Graffiti daubed on walls and the sides of buildings in and around High Barnet has become an increasing eyesore in the opinion of residents who ask the Barnet Society why there has been no attempt in recent months to mount a clean-up.

After what for her personally – and for the rest of the country – has been a momentous political year, the Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers, will be the guest of the Barnet Society at our annual question and answer session at 3pm on Friday 20 January.

Two sculptures by the noted Barnet sculptor John Brown are due to appear in Steven Spielberg’s most recent science fiction adventure, Ready Player One, which is being filmed in Birmingham and at the Warner Studios in Leavesden.

High Barnet’s landmark public house, the Red Lion at the top of Barnet Hill, will be closed for most of January so that it can be refurbished ready for re-opening as an upmarket eatery.