Barnet Winter 2020
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CAMPAIGNING FOR A BETTER COMMUNITY SINCE 1945 INSIDE: Pages 2&3 The Green and pleasant land Pages 4&5 Jenny Remfry remembers Pages 8&9 Heroes of the town centre Pages 10&11 Medieval Festival Barnet Pages 12-15 Nick Jones looks back Pages 16&17 Winter 2020 £1 Fight for good design Society Barnet High Street around the time the 75 Society was formed YEARS Copyright The Francis Frith Collection SPECIAL ISSUE From left to right, Bob Burstow, Nigel Murchison and Gail Laser at the launch of their campaign Right: Newspaper advertisement for meeting 1945-2020 75th Anniversary Commemorative Newsletter History in modest subscriptions and were planning to celebrate occasional donations to this anniversary with a support their work, that’s combined AGM and party in the making an anniversary worth June. Regrettably, Covid-19 This newsletter gives a taste of the celebrating. put a stop to that. Society’s important earlier moments This newsletter does three We still hope to stage a and achievements. things. First, we look back at celebratory event and AGM A fuller account of our earlier years is in the reasons for the Society’s in 2021, but the continuing The Diamond Collection, published to mark foundation and at some major uncertainty makes it our 60th Jubilee in 2005. Copies at £2 For three-quarters of achievements, particularly impossible to set a date yet. plus P&P are available from the Chairman a century the Barnet over the past 25 years. We will inform our members (contact details on back cover). Society has been working Secondly, we highlight issues as soon as we can. The Society archives are held at to protect the quality of we’re currently grappling In the meanwhile, we hope Barnet Museum. As well as minutes of our buildings and green with. And thirdly, we attempt that this Commemorative meetings since our foundation, it includes spaces, and of the lives to future-gaze: what further Issue of our Newsletter will Newsletters, Annual Reports, cuttings from of those who live and changes we might expect, provide some compensation the Barnet Press and other interesting work in and around the and what the Society must until we can meet again memorabilia. In normal times, the archives constituency of Chipping do to be fit for the next safely in person. Long may can be viewed by arrangement with Barnet. For a group of 75 years. the Barnet Society flourish! Barnet Museum. local amateurs with only At the start of 2020, we Robin Bishop, chair. Winter 2020 | 1 75 YEARS SPECIAL ISSUE The Green Belt around Barnet and (below) Patrick Abercrombie, author of the 1944 Greater London Plan Green and pleasant land The Barnet Society was founded on 2 May 1945...but why – and why then? Robin Bishop takes up the story The 1920s and 30s had alarmed that they leaked the designating a ‘green belt seen London grow hugely plan to Trevor Jukes, who or girdle of open space’ around new Underground told his cousin Gwyneth around London went back stations and along trunk Cowing, who passed it on to 1935, but a council could roads. A tide of semi- to her friend, the landscape only stop its being built over detached houses, gardens architect Sylvia Crowe. by purchasing the land. It and shopping parades had Through the medium of the wasn’t until 1944, with washed over most of the Barnet Press, these three the publication of Patrick old towns and villages roused the folk of Barnet Abercrombie’s Greater surrounding London, and called a town meeting London Plan, that a complete merging them into almost (on 12 June 1945). There, belt of green space, continuous suburbia. they displayed a large map permanently safeguarded With the 2nd World War of Barnet and the Dollis from development, became a won in Europe, there was Valley and on to it stuck, bit real proposition. a national desire to clear by bit, pieces of black paper What made such a the slums and build decent to show where the house- constraint on London’s homes for all. Barnet Urban building was proposed, until development acceptable? District Council planned to almost the whole valley This was down to triple its population. Our was covered. The people of Abercrombie’s proposal, Vice-President Jenny Remfry Barnet were so shocked and adopted in the 1946 New describes it thus: outraged that the Council Towns Act, to create a “Some enterprising had to refuse the developers, ring of new towns around property developers except for the area closest to London, outside the Green presented a plan to Barnet the town, between Underhill Belt, to absorb the demand UDC to build houses in the and the Dollis Brook, which for new housing and Dollis Valley, covering the became the Dollis Valley promote alternative centres fields between Arkley and Estate.” of growth. It was reinforced Totteridge…The Council The group that coalesced by the 1947 Town & Country were minded to accept around Jukes, Cowing Planning Act, which for the the proposal but two of and Crowe became the first time made planning the Councillors were so Barnet Society. The idea of permission a requirement 2 | Winter 2020 Barnet Society for any new development. for Nature Conservation and Right: Adverts But it was only in 1955 that Sites of Special Scientific for various councils were required to Interest – some within only events and designate Green Belt land a few minutes’ walk of our talks held in their local plans. As a homes. If you walk to the under the result, Chipping Barnet is top of Whitings Hill you can’t auspices of the society today surrounded on three fail to be struck by their sides by Green Belt (see combined extent. map on opposite page). Even Thanks to our founders, better, we’ve inherited many and to those who came after other natural assets such as them, our bit of Barnet is parks, Metropolitan Open still a remarkably green and Land, Sites of Importance pleasant land. Goodbye to planning as we've known it? In June, Boris Johnson announced the most radical changes in our planning system since the 2nd World War: a major increase in ‘permitted development’, other changes to the current system and a White Paper proposing its comprehensive reform. The Town & Country Planning Act 1947, on which our planning system is based, has been vital in the fight to protect the Green Belt and control development in and around Chipping Barnet. In September, we submitted criticism of the proposed housing algorithm, and in October our response to the White Paper (summarised below). We supported • Some streamlining of the planning system • Better enforcement of planning law • Recognition of the need to upskill and adequately resource the planning service. We had particular concerns about • Its basic premise that the present planning system is outdated and ineffective • Excessive focus on housing, especially the market sector • T oo little regard to wider planning challenges of the 21st Michael Kirkbride century such as redressing regional disparities, new forms Costume Drawing (detail) Oil on canvas of transport, land reclamation or power generation • Significant omissions e.g. no mention of social housing or the Metropolitan Green Belt • Lengthy and costly disruption Instagram: @insightart • Slow delivery of housing Facebook: @InsightSchoolOfArt • Abolition of public consultation on individual planning applications. We concluded that • The PWP fires a scatter-gun of remedies at a limited – Art School and sometimes imagined – set of problems. • It barely addresses the realities of a post-Covid world on for Everyone! the edge of a climate emergency. • It risks major disruption to a system that is not perfect, but capable of fine-tuning. • In the short term, it risks failing to meet the housing target the Government sets itself. In the longer term, it risks undermining public faith in planning. 1A CADBURY CLOSE WHET STONE LONDON N20 9BD • There is time to rethink, and we urged the Government www.insight-art.co.uk to do so. 0796 3 1 901 97 Our full response is available on our website Winter 2020 | 3 75 YEARS SPECIAL ISSUE the 1980s. Gwyn Cowing died in August 1987, having been President of the Society since 1966. In 1990, the Society elected a new President: Sydney Chapman, A trip who had become the MP for Chipping Barnet in 1979. He was already representing the Society on the London down Green Belt Council, of which he was Chairman, and the instigator of ‘Plant a Tree memory in ’73’. He was knighted in 1995. When Sydney Chapman retired from Parliament at lane the General Election of 2005, he resigned as President. Vice-President Jenny writes: I was so itself the aim of ensuring Above: David The person eventually lucky. When I joined the that Barnet was a pleasant Lee and Jenny chosen to succeed him, in of the Barnet Barnet Society in 1977, place in which to live. By Remfry 2008, was Aubrey Rose CBE, Society is an Gwyneth Cowing (below) supporting the Abercrombie a successful London solicitor and she invited me to tea plan to create a Green Belt with a colourful career - honorary elected at Whalebones [her home]. round London, they were happily still with us. post, but all our She was the proprietor of the able to safeguard many of The Society has had an Barnet Press, President of the open spaces of Barnet impressive list of Vice- ‘Veeps’ have the Barnet Society, President and maintain the leafy Presidents, including Trevor earned their of the Barnet and District nature of the area. The open Jukes, (by now Dame) Sylvia Local History Society and a land in the Dollis Valley was Crowe, and Andrew Pares title.