News from The Barnet Society

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.

Enforcement cameras at road junctions in and around High Barnet which were vandalised when the Ultra Low Emission Zone was extended to the outer London boroughs appear to be back in working order. Measures have now been taken to protect cables connected to the cameras.

Tim Edwards, the headmaster who led Queen Elizabeth's Boys' School, Barnet, through what became a difficult but short-lived era as a comprehensive school, has died at the age of 98.

Barnet Council's strategic planning committee has given the go ahead for the construction of a two-storey clubhouse and floodlights at the Byng Road playing fields even thought it would result in "substantial harm to the sense of openness" of surrounding Green Belt countryside.

A baby bank which provides nappies, formula milk, clothes and other essentials for babies and small children has opened a new base which is ready to help needy and vulnerable families living in Barnet, Hertfordshire, and nearby London boroughs.

After a year's work by volunteers helping to build temporary stables, classroom and an arena, the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Nagus Narenthira, celebrated the official launch in Mays Lane, Barnet, of the new home of an equine therapy centre which assists challenged youngsters.

Barnet U3A choir gave a spirited curtain raiser for a Wellbeing Day organised by Barnet Council to promote support services and help advertise community drop-in events for elderly, needy and lonely residents.

Hertsmere Borough Council celebrated in style to launch the 84B -- the reintroduced bus route between Potters Bar railway station and High Barnet which reinstates a missing service and provides a vital connection to Barnet Hospital.

Another sign of the mounting opposition to plans to replace much of The Spires shopping centre with blocks of flats was the strength of a Saturday morning protest in Barnet High Street. Leaflets were handed out and shoppers queued up to sign a petition opposing the redevelopment.