News from The Barnet Society

A final go-ahead for construction work on a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre continues to depend on signing up an “international fashion brand”.

Residents are being consulted about the possibility of a massive extension to High Barnet’s controlled parking zone to cope with uncontrolled off-street car parking and traffic congestion following recent expansion at Barnet Hospital.

The tenth anniversary of the poisoning with radioactive polonium of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko brings back memories for an ex-Barnet journalist who reported on the role of Barnet Hospital in the story surrounding one of London’s most alarming assassinations.

A 50-acre green space, open to the public from dawn to dusk, would be one of the suggested benefits of the proposal to establish a natural burial ground on farmland behind Barnet Road and Barnet Gate Lane, Arkley.

A football team for former East Barnet grammar school boys that has expanded over the last sixty years to become a community-based amateur football club, has been celebrating the performance of its top players.

The Ark Academy network says it intends to work with planners at Barnet Council to try to meet local anxieties over proposals for a super-size, £31 million new school to be built on the site of Underhill, the former stadium of Barnet Football Club.

An environmentally-friendly natural burial ground might be developed on farmland backing on to Barnet Gate Lane, Arkley, and Mays Lane, if there is local support, and planning permission can be obtained.

A survey to assess the size and shape of the lost hamlet of Kitts End could assist the ongoing archaeological investigation to determine the precise site of the Battle of Barnet of 1471.

The combination of planning relaxations, housing demand, property prices and uncertainty as to Council intentions makes this a critical time for building in Chipping Barnet.

After a year’s delay, and a dearth of information, public exhibitions are finally being arranged to allow public consultation over the proposals to build a new free school with over 1,800 places on the site of the Underhill Stadium, formerly the home of Barnet Football Club.

“The boys dun good” was the general consensus of passers-by as three High Barnet seniors spent 16 man hours giving the Church Passage bench a much-needed wash and brush-up.

High Barnet’s claim to be the highest spot between London and York meant it was ideally situated to take part in the lighting of beacons to mark the Queen’s 90th birthday.

Three volunteers spent the morning washing down and scrubbing clean the long, architecturally-designed teak bench that is beside the gardens in Church Passage, just off Barnet High Street.

A lot of new housing is coming to Barnet over the next few years. In the Council’s Housing Strategy 2015-25, it expected to be able to build 20,000 homes. But the latest forecast is that some 30,000 will be needed, so more sites must be found.

Local residents will get more opportunities to view the work of members of the Barnet Guild of Artists if arrangements can be made to increase the number of public displays of their paintings and other art forms.

Celebrations surrounding the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death gave an added impetus to the monthly gathering of the Barnet Poetry Group when members spent an April Saturday afternoon discussing the playwright’s many soliloquies and speeches. The group, established in 1990, grew out of an earlier poetry class organised by the Workers’ Educational Association.

Schools in and around Barnet are already queuing up for their pupils to visit the Byng Road nature reserve and its new eco-friendly environment centre after its official opening by leading benefactor Janet Hulme of the Hadley Trust.

Barnet is living up to its fame in Cockney rhyming slang: a survey shows there are more hairdressing salons in the London borough Barnet than in any other part of capital, except for the West End.

Any planning application to build houses on the 14 acres of woods and farmland at Whalebones – between Wood Street and Barnet Hospital – is “highly unlikely” to be approved, says the Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers.

Work has finally started at the Elmbank site, opposite the Arkley public house, to demolish derelict nurses’ homes that have been an eyesore for years.  Once the land has been cleared, Linden Homes intend to build 93 flats and 21 houses on a 3.9-acre site that extends from its frontage on Barnet Road to just north