News from The Barnet Society

What is being billed as The Big Picnic on Saturday 4 June on the lawn beside Barnet Parish Church will be one of the highlights of local celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee bank holiday weekend. Streets parties are being arranged in communities in and around High Barnet with a range of lunchtime and afternoon get-togethers.

Hadley FC, the oldest football club playing in Barnet, have won promotion to a higher league. Next season they are looking forward to hosting some high-profile local derbies at their ground in Brickfield Lane, Arkley.

Hadley Green's pink marble drinking fountain -- out of order for the last 50 years -- might possibly secure a new lease of life and once again offer walkers and even their dogs a refreshing drink of water.

Barnet High Street is to lose one of its convenience stores -- the Sainsbury's Local at 146 High Street is to close later this year. Sainsbury’s said the closure had been a “difficult decision” and the company recognised that this would be an unsettling time for the staff.

Barnet Council is to charge £790 during the summer months to remove grass clippings from High Barnet's two bowling greens -- way above the £210 that was charged last year. Re-designating Barnet Bowls Club as a business means that the contents of its three green bins are now deemed to be commercial waste.

After investing £22 million in building a 100-apartment luxury care home in Wood Street, High Barnet, the Signature Care Homes group has now embarked on a marketing drive to attract future residents.

Golfers with disabilities assembled at The Shire golf course in St Albans Road, Barnet, for the launch of the Cairns Cup, a new international disability golf competition between teams from Europe and the USA.

Labour has taken overall control of Barnet Borough Council for the first time since the London boroughs were created in the 1960s -- and High Barnet is one of the former Conservative strongholds that now has two Labour councillors.

Barnet High Street is busily adapting to changes in trading patterns that developed during lockdown, and which seem to be here to stay given the ability of so many employees to work from home.

Transport for London has rejected a plea for out-of-service buses to offer a skeleton 84 service when heading back and forth between Potters Bar bus garage and stops where services start and terminate in High Barnet.

Organ and piano pieces by the celebrated Barnet organist and composer William Ralph Driffill were played for the first time in probably 100 years at a recital commemorating the centenary of his death.

Knights on horseback are to feature for the first time in military re-enactments at the fourth annual Barnet Medieval Festival to be held in mid-June at the Byng Road playing fields.  Staging mounted combat will be a spectacular addition to what is rapidly being recognised as the leading medieval festival in London and south-east of England,

Residents were delighted to welcome back to High Barnet the celebrated chewing gum artist Ben Wilson who spent a day refreshing a trail of tiny pavement illustrations that starts outside his parents' former home in Carnarvon Road and continues round the corner into Alston Road.

A two-century old gravestone in Monken Hadley churchyard was the final stop on a guided walk around locations associated with inspirational women from Barnet's past.

An online election hustings is being organised by local pressure groups in the run-up to the May council elections to promote what they believe should become a shopping list of environmental targets for a newly elected Barnet Council.

Street parties, ceremonial tree plantings and the lighting of the beacon on top of Monken Hadley church tower are just some of the local events being arranged to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in June.

Bus passengers mourning the loss of the 84 service from New Barnet to Potters Bar have taken to social media to express their anger. “It’s such a shame…I never thought the day would come when we would be cut off from Potters Bar,” said one Barnet resident.

After missing out on so much during the Covid.19 pandemic, Barnet Choral Society are in final rehearsals for a belated 80th anniversary concert -- a performance of one of the great challenges of choral singing, Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.

The bridegroom at this fashionable Monken Hadley wedding early in the last century was William Ralph Driffill, who became an admired organist and composer.

Chemotherapy patients receiving treatment at Chase Farm Hospital will benefit from two new cooling cap systems to be purchased with funds raised by Barnet and District CancerLink. A cheque for £22,890 was handed over by members of the cancer care group at a ceremony organised by the Royal Free Charity.