News from The Barnet Society

Scenes from the battles of St Albans (1461) and Barnet (1471) – two of the engagements in the Wars of the Roses – are to be re-created as part of the Barnet Medieval Festival to be held over the weekend of June 9 and 10 at the Byng Road playing fields.

Buildings around the iconic headquarters of the former National Institute for Medical Research on the Ridgeway, at Mill Hill, are being demolished to make way for a new 460-home development by Barratt London.

If planning approval is given, a Premier Inn hotel and restaurant is to be built on the historic St Albans Road site of Barnet’s much reduced stalls market.

A bumper crowd of well-wishers and Easter Saturday shoppers turned out for the opening of the first Barnet Teenage Market. Twelve stalls almost filled the Waitrose entrance to the Spires shopping centre – and the bandstand had rarely seen so much action in years, with a succession of local musicians and singers providing live entertainment.

Hands-on experience in a great variety of trades, sports and occupations was all part of a careers day organised at the Pavilion School, in Chandos Avenue,Whetstone, which provides support and education for Barnet children who are outside mainstream education.

Cromer Road Primary School’s swimming pool – where countless hundreds of Barnet children have learned to swim over almost half a century – is in desperate need of repairs, improvements and a new roof.

Replica copies of four of the heraldic banners of the dukes, earls and knights who fought in the 1471 Battle of Barnet are now on display in the Spires shopping centre.

Fred Howett, a long-standing member of the Barnet Guild of Artists, who helped to organise regular and numerous local exhibitions of members’ art work, has died at the age of 74.

A new masterplan for the future redevelopment of the Barnet Hospital site is in preparation and it does include proposals for a new multi-storey car park. Royal Free London NHS Trust has already conducted an informal pre-planning application with Barnet Council on future plans for the Wellhouse Lane site.

Fund raisers from across north and central London laid foundation bricks at a ceremony at the construction site in Byng Road, Barnet, for the new Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, due to open in the spring of next year.

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.

Keeping the High Street in High Barnet spick and span gives veteran road sweeper Douglas Shrubb so much satisfaction that he has opted to continue working rather than take retirement. Mr Shrubb, who is 66 in March, has been the dedicated road sweeper for the High Street and Wood Street for the last 13 years.

Over the last 18 months, Sadiq Khan has been consulting Londoners about aspects of a new London Plan. It sets a framework for local plans across London.

Forcing Barnet Hospital to build an upper deck over its car park is one option that should be considered by Barnet Council in an attempt to relieve excessive parking in nearby roads.

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.

A campaign has been launched to restore to full use Hadley Green’s historic water fountain, an ornate structure built of pink marble, and once resplendent with a set of brass drinking cups.

Years of uncertainty about the ownership of Barnet Museum and the future of Barnet’s historic physic well have both been successfully resolved after sustained efforts by volunteers and well-wishers.

Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, Barnet, played its part in the celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Representation of People Act giving women the right to vote.

Sitting right in the middle of a typical Barnet street of Edwardian homes is an eye-catching 1960s modern house that is still lived in by the architect who had to fight long and hard against town planners reluctant to give their approval.

High Barnet’s most prominent “ghost advertisement” – high up on a side wall in the High Street – is creating quite a flurry of interest and might well be up for listing as being of historical interest.