Living in Barnet: area guide to homes, schools and transport links

This charming North London spot boasts green, outdoor spaces and top schools – and it's only a short train ride from King's Cross
Daniel Lynch
Anthea Masey1 August 2017

Nearly 370,000 people live in Barnet, more than any other London borough, and council leaders have ambitious plans to increase that number with massive regeneration that will add 27,000 new homes and as many as 30,000 new jobs over the next 10 to 15 years.

Most of the development of this north London borough will be in Colindale — where 10,000 new homes are planned — and also in Brent Cross and Cricklewood, which will get 7,500.

Much of this rush for growth will bypass the spacious, leafy streets of Barnet itself, which sits on top of a high hill on the edge of the Hertfordshire countryside, where the little village of Monken Hadley and the open green spaces of Monken Hadley Common form an oasis of tranquillity, and where locating the exact site of the Battle of Barnet, a key clash in the Wars of the Roses, is the most vexing local issue.

Lawrence Henry of Statons, the area’s main estate agent, describes Barnet as having every sort of property, from tiny cottages through to Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and Twenties and Thirties houses, and modern flats.

Barnet’s annual horse fair, held in early September at Green Gate Stables in Mays Lane, is a gathering place for travellers to trade horses and carts. Established by Royal Charter in 1588 by Queen Elizabeth I, it gave rise to one of the best-known examples of Cockney rhyming slang — Barnet Fair rhyming with hair, hence “barnet”, which is still used to describe a head of hair, a haircut or hairstyle.

Barnet has a literary history stretching from the early 19th century when writer Fanny Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope, rented Grandon, a fine Georgian house facing the common in Hadley Green Road. In far more recent times, between 1965 and 1976, husband-and-wife novelists Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard owned Lemmons, now known as Gladsmuir, a double-fronted early Victorian house on Hadley Common. Writing in Slipstream, her autobiography, Howard describes the busy literary scene and constant entertaining that was her life at Lemmons. However, it was also where she found time to write two novels; where Amis wrote The Green Man and The Alteration, and where his son Martin started out on his career as a novelist, writing The Rachel Papers and Dead Babies.

Barnet is located 15 miles north of central London with Potters Bar and Hatfield to the north, Cockfosters to the east, Totteridge and Whetstone to the south and Elstree and Boreham Wood to the west.

You'll find many double-fronted Victorian, Georgian period homes and Edwardian houses in the area
Daniel Lynch

Property scene

Hadley Wood has Barnet’s most expensive homes. This self-contained enclave grew up around the railway station which opened in 1885. It has some fine double-fronted Victorian and Edwardian houses, later detached houses and modern gated mansions. There’s a little shopping centre around the station, and popular restaurants Thymari, in Crescent West, and the Mary Beale Restaurant at West Lodge Park Hotel, Cockfosters Road.

Georgian houses and period cottages are found in Monken Hadley, around the common and in the little enclave off Hadley Highstone. In High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, there are roads of Victorian semi-detached and terrace houses to the west of High Street near Queen Elizabeth’s School.

New Barnet station opened in 1850 and there are some fine Victorian detached and semi-detached houses in the nearby roads such as Richmond Road and Somerset Road. There is a small shopping centre around the station, where there has been a large recent office-to-residential conversion.

East Barnet has its own village centre at the junction of East Barnet Road, Cat Hill and Church Hill Road, with roads of Victorian cottages and self-contained maisonettes. Nearby Oakleigh Park, verging on Whetstone, has its own station and streets of detached Twenties houses. Elsewhere, Barnet has a good supply of Thirties semi-detached and terrace houses.

What's new?

Brook Valley Gardens in Hera Avenue off Mays Lane is the regeneration of the Dollis Valley Estate by developer Countryside and housing association L&Q. Here, 436 flats and maisonettes are being demolished and replaced by 616 mixed-tenure homes.

Countryside is selling one-, two- and three-bedroom flats and three- and four-bedroom houses. Three-bedroom houses start at £630,000, with four-bedroom houses at £765,000. Visit brookvalleygardens.co.uk or call 020 8440 1872.

Elmbank is a Linden Homes development of 114 flats and houses in Elmbank Avenue, including 24 affordable homes. There are two- and three-bedroom flats and the houses have three to five bedrooms. Prices start at £457,000 for a two-bedroom flat rising to a starting price of £1.6 million for a five-bedroom house. Most sales are off-plan for completion next summer. Call 020 3733 4133.

Barnet’s most expensive roads are seeing a growing trend for developers to build blocks of flats which look like large, modern houses. Schemes like these are popular with local couples who sell their family houses when the children leave home and buy a flat, possibly freeing up cash and cutting out the maintenance of a large garden.

The Residence in Camlet Way is one such scheme. Recently launched, there are nine flats, including two on the ground floor with their own outdoor swimming pools. Prices start at £1,795,000. Call estate agents Statons on 020 8441 9555.

Contact L&Q on 0300 456 9997 for information about the shared-ownership homes at Brook Valley Gardens. The same housing association has one remaining two-bedroom shared-ownership flat at Bolingbroke Park in nearby Cockfosters, priced at £117,500 for a 25 per cent share of a home with a market price of £590,000.

Housing association Genesis will have 10 shared-ownership flats at Elmbank. Call 020 3627 3484.

Renting

Barnet has a busy rental market that offers homes across the board, from tiny cottages to large mansions. The sprawling Hadley Wood properties are popular with celebrities, and also with overseas executives whose work brings them to Britain for a couple of years.

Transport

High Barnet is the last stop on one of the northern branches of the Northern line, with trains into the City and the West End.

New Barnet and Oakleigh Park have trains to King’s Cross that take between 15 and 18 minutes. These two stations, and also Hadley Wood station, have trains to Moorgate that take between 27 and 34 minutes.

Oakleigh Park is in Travel Zone 4, and an annual travelcard costs £1,860. High Barnet and New Barnet are in Zone 5 — an annual travelcard costs £2,208 — while Hadley Wood station is in Zone 6, with the yearly travelcard coming in at a cost of £2,364.

Staying power

Statons estate agent Lawrence Henry says many families have lived in Barnet for generations. “As estate agents we wish they would move more often but it does mean there is a strong community and Statons supports a lot of local organisations and community groups.”

Postcode

EN5 to the west includes High Barnet and Arkley, while EN4 to the east includes Hadley Wood, New Barnet and East Barnet. To the south the N20 Whetstone postcode encompasses Oakleigh Park.

Best roads

Camlet Way, Beech Hill and Cockfosters Road.

Up and coming

New Barnet has some lovely undiscovered Victorian houses in the roads close to the station.

Lifestyle

Shops and restaurants
The 15th-century St John the Baptist Church, the little green behind it and the attractive courtyard in front of Barnet and Southgate College, are the top spots in Barnet High Street, which has too many charity shops to indicate a retail centre in rude health.

The alternative is to take the No 326 bus to Brent Cross. The Spires Shopping Centre in High Street has branches of Waitrose, H&M, New Look and Waterstones.

A recent face lift has attracted a branch of Italian chain eaterie Carluccio’s. Other chain restaurants in Barnet include Prezzo and PizzaExpress. In the High Street there is traditional Victoria Bakery, in business for 200 years, along with Patisserie Joie de Vie; and Barnet’s favourite restaurant, Spizzico, which serves an eclectic menu mixing Mexican, Cajun and Italian cuisines.

Open space
Barnet is on the edge of the Hertfordshire countryside. Monken Hadley Common to the north of the town centre is a favourite with dog walkers. Oakhill Park in Parkside Gardens, East Barnet, has a bowling green, cricket and football pitches, tennis courts, several children’s playgrounds and an outdoor gym.

Two short walking trails pass through Barnet. Pymmes Brook Trail is a 10-mile walk from Monken Hadley Common to Pickett’s Lock on the River Lee Navigation. Dollis Valley Greenwalk is another 10-mile walk, from Mill Hill to the Hampstead Heath Extension.

Leisure and the arts
Barnet is all about the outdoors. There are two tennis clubs — Barnet Lawn Tennis Club in Gloucester Road and Hadley Wood Lawn Tennis Club in Crescent East. The three local golf clubs are Old Fold Manor in Hadley Green; North Middlesex in Friern Barnet Lane in Whetstone, and The Shire London in St Albans Road, the only Seve Ballesteros-designed course in the country. Old Elizabethans Cricket Club is in Mays Lane. The council-owned swimming pool is at the Church Farm Leisure Centre in Church Hill Road.

Barnet Museum in Wood Street is running the Lottery-funded Battle of Barnet Project, which aims to find the true location of this significant engagement during the dynastic 15th-century Wars of the Roses, and to raise awareness of its place in history.

The Bull Theatre at Susi Earnshaw Theatre School in the High Street puts on an annual pantomime and occasional other shows.

Schools

Barnet itself has a choice of good state primary and secondary schools including a boys’ grammar school, while many of the local private schools in the outlying areas offer a coach service from Barnet.

Primary school

State primary schools with an “outstanding” Ofsted rating are: Foulds in Byng Road; St Catherine’s RC in Vale Drive; Whitings Hill in Whitings Road; Hadley Wood in Courtleigh Avenue; St Mary’s CofE in Littlegrove; and Trent CofE in Church Way.

Comprehensive

The “outstanding” state secondary school is Queen Elizabeth’s (boys, ages 11 to 18), a selective grammar school in Queens Road.

The local comprehensive school Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ (ages 11 to 18) in High Street is rated “good”. The Jewish Community Secondary School, or JCoSS (co-ed, ages 11 to 16), a state comprehensive in Castlewood Road, is rated “good”, as is East Barnet (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Chestnut Grove. Dame Alice Owen’s (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) is a partially selective state school in Potters Bar — children living in Barnet can take the entrance exam.

Further education

Barnet and Southgate College (co-ed, ages 16 to 18) in Wood Street is the local further education college, and the government watchdog rates it “good”.

Private

The local private schools are the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School (co-ed, ages nine to 16) in High Street, a performing arts school where Amy Winehouse was a student; Lyonsdown (co-ed, ages three to 11) in Richmond Road, and St Martha’s (girls, 11 to 18) in Camlet Way, which is being renamed Mount House in September and will become co-educational in September 2018.

Private schools Aldenham in Radlett, and both the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ and Girls’ schools in Elstree, offer a coach pick-up service from Barnet.