TRIAL WEBSITE: History
We have put together this part of the website to help further understand the breadth of history in our town. We’d love you to explore it, check it, question it, and tell us what’s missing. You can email us at history@lovebarnet.co.uk
During the Spanish Civil War, evacuated Basque children were given refuge in Arkley between 1937 and 1942. Their stay is recorded in local histories and survivors’ accounts.
At Christ Church on St Albans Road, this Grade II–listed marble obelisk commemorates eight former pupils of Barnet Boys’ (Christ Church) School who died in the Second Boer War (1899–1902). Decorated with a laurel-wreathed crossed rifle and sword, it was unveiled by Field Marshal Lord Grenfell in July 1903.
“A Second World War bombing decoy at Barnet that was built to deflect enemy bombing from Royal Air Force Northolt airfield.” (Source)
Erected by Sir Jeremy Sambrook in 1740, this sandstone obelisk marks the area associated with the Battle of Barnet of 14 April 1471. Its inscription records Edward IV’s victory over the Earl of Warwick, a decisive moment in the Wars of the Roses. The 1840 the monument was moved 180 meters to its present loaction (source).
On 14 April 1471, the Battle of Barnet was fought in heavy fog between Edward IV’s Yorkists and the Lancastrians led by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Confusion on the battlefield brought a decisive Yorkist victory, Warwick’s death, and the restoration of Edward IV to the throne.
This is a private residence with no public access. During wartime Reuters maintained emergency quarters at Barnet on the fringe of London’s telephone network and on the route of the land cables from central London to the radio station at Leafield.
During WWII, more than 1,500 Voluntary Interceptors monitored foreign Morse code and forwarded their logs to “Box 25” at Arkley View, where traffic was analysed and passed to GCHQ. Volunteers at the National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park say that this network provided 60% of Bletchley Park’s signals intelligence, a role kept secret until a 1979 BBC programme.
“Days of Darkness: The London Borough of Barnet at War” by Percy Reboul (2005) expands on his earlier “Barnet at War” (1995). The volumes collect local testimonies, images and records to chart the borough’s experience of conflict; copies can be reserved via Barnet Libraries.
London’s largest medieval weekend marks the 1471 Battle of Barnet with living-history encampments, market stalls, and family activities. Visitors can watch full-scale battle re-enactments alongside gunnery, archery, music and dance, bringing Wars of the Roses history vividly to life.
In the Second World War, Barnet prepared for air raids with public shelters, ARP coordination and extensive civil-defence measures. Bomb damage mapping and surviving leaflets record how the borough organised protection for residents and responded to raids across 1939–45.
Chipping Barnet’s war memorial stands in the church garden, commemorating 275 local people who died in the First World War and a further nine in the Second World War. Erected in 1921 on the Barnet Hill side of the Church and moved in 1938 for traffic flow, it bears the inscription “See that ye conquer by living as we have conquered by dying.”
Based in Barnet, the 7th (Royal 2nd Middlesex Militia) was redesignated in 1881 as a battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Embodied during the Boer War but not sent overseas, it became the 6th (Extra Reserve) Battalion in 1908 and moved to Winchester.
During the Second World War, a prisoner-of-war camp operated at St Albans Road. Contemporary reports and later recollections note the camp’s presence in the local landscape and the interaction of POWs with nearby communities and farms. Image Source (Potters Bar Museum)
