I lived there until 1997 and well remember the climb up the hill to the road. It was harder than it looks on the video. The description of Barnet being ideally situated between city and countryside is right. I lived a brisk 10 minutes walk to Hadley and really appreciated the location even when making the climb after a day's work in town. Now, at the age of 81, I probably couldn' do it.
Not for the first time, I'm amazed to learn that freight trains ran on the overground parts of the Tube until the 1960s. Would be very interested in seeing a video about freight on the Underground, Jago.
At Epping there used to be a regular night delivery of coal to the goods yard . Not only that but from Epping to Ongar until about 1960 it was actually a shuttle steam service because they hadn’t electrified the line .
@@raakone I don’t think Beeching would’ve had any effect because his report is purely on British railways and this was London transport . However the goods yard at both Epping and Blakehall disappeared in the mid-60s With the one at Epping becoming a car park and coal was delivered by lorry .
@@steveosborne2297 but even if the trackage was London transport, weren't the freight trains still BR? Just like BR did still run a handful of Liverpool Street to Brighton passenger trains via the East London Line (at that time part of the Underground) until 1966! (And some freight until 1962 or 1963)
I used to live in New Barnet in the 80s, and went to school just opposite High Barnet tube station (QEGS - seen in the video a couple of times). Rather nostalgic watching
Weather wise, this video surely takes us through all seasons of the year! I have friends who live at High Barnet and insist they live in the countryside (they talk of “taking the train” into central London - never the Underground!).
The area that New Barnet station sits in is called 'New Barnet'. You have east barnet, new barnet, high barnet, chipping barnet and friern barnet. Not easy aha
A very special place and therefore station. My mum was born and lived here, not 10 minutes from High Barnet . She, her sister and my grandad worked in the early 50s for the Midland Region of BR.
For a few years our daughter lived near Mill Hill East. We usually caught the High Barnet tube from Euston when visiting her. We always changed for Mill Hill East. I often wondered what High Barnet looked like and now I know. Very rural yet the tube goes through central London and to the south. Very well connected.
The Dollis Brook Viaduct view you showed is a regular one for me while being Dad taxi between our home near Edgware and where all my daughter's friends seem to live in Finchley. I stopped to take pictures myself on one particular more leisurely day because of the ridiculous, but necessary for the route, civil engineering. All that effort for a branch line. That said, those Northern Heights connections would have been very useful to us. As would the proposed and scrapped Met Line re-routing to the actual centre of Watford (aforementioned daughter is now in the Sixth Form in Watford) and the long forgotten plan to extend what is now the Jubilee Line North from Stanmore.
When the LPTB took over the Northern Heights branches part of the deal included the LNER paying for some of the 1938 stock trains which subsequently carried plates on the chassis, "Property of the LNER". All in all, a fair report of Barnet. The station I had to move to in order to get my promotion to Motorman in 1981.
Never realised the origin of the Cockney "barnet" before! :) Nor indeed that the common "chipping" prefix indicates a market town. Most of them have stayed pretty small it seems; Chipping Norton, Campden, Sodbury, Ongar. If they've grown, like Barnet, they seem to have lost the Chipping prefix, no doubt because people can' be bothered (we all know we're talking about Barnet, why say 2 extra syllables?).
This gave me stress flashbacks from 2018 when I would travel by public transport from Colindale to Hadley Wood. But as a masochist it was also nice to revisit the area through this video
This was a good stimulus to look at the geography of the area. Barnet town really is high, on top of a hill about 400 feet/ 125m above sea level on the old A1 (Great North Road). Even High Barnet station is about 25m lower down, though within a quarter of a mile of the crossroads at the bottom of the High Street. New Barnet is a further mile away and it looks as if it's quite a bit lower down. Must go and take a look. Kudos to the good folk of Barnet Museum who clearly provided some extra interesting information.
I've heard it said that the keyhole on the door of Barnet Church is on the same level as the cross at the top of St Paul's Cathedral. Apparently, Brookmans Park, a few miles north of Barnet on the old A1, is the highest point between London and York.
@@harrySinga-bg4gi It sounds about right. St Paul's Cathedral according to the stats is 365 feet high. And maybe 30 feet above the Thames for its base.
Have you ever walked the full length of a tube line Jago? It's a really unique way to see London. I did the Victoria line the other day and felt very proud of myself when I got to the end
I hope above ground not along the line🙂 A very good effort, and probably quite a bit further than the tube route where the roads don't match it, plus all the crossings. The real length challenge would be to try the Central, Northern or Piccadilly. I'd also insist that you did the whole of the old Central Line out to Ongar, and getting across Heathrow might be interesting 🤔
@@Julius_Hardware That sounds a particularly picturesque route. Sounds like you had a refreshment break at each of the pubs en route? Didn't want to seem biased against any of them, no doubt :)
@@iankemp1131 it was a substantial walk. About 27km in total, not helped by a diversion around green park because of something going on at Buckingham palace. I'm thinking of doing the Circle line next, or maybe the shortest branch of the northern line from Battersea to High Barnet
I suspect we will end up with Jago’s version of all the Tube Stations, however not in the fastest possible time but in the gentle relaxed delivery of Jago, over several years.
I'd be interested in the origins of Chipping as referring to a market town. It's similar to Swedish 'köping' (pronounced 'scheupping') which is a suffix to a number of place names which relates to their having been market towns. Seems to me that the word 'shopping' probably relates to this
This video makes me want to visit the place next time I’m back in Britain (I’ve lived in Canada for the last 56 years). I grew up a few minutes walk from Sudbury Town station. Come to think of it, quite a few of Jago’s videos suggest places to visit, along with the numerous heritage railways and family. Going to need a long visit. Thank you Jago 7:46 for adding to the length of my next visit”home”. Edited for typos.
Lovely place. I hope it never changes. Except for the escalator thing. That would be kinda cool. (When I say the path I immediately thought "needs a funicular"!)
Many areas are called Barnet while the town of Barnet including Hadley Wood was in Hertfordshire and the other barnet neighbourhoods were in the conurbation of Middlesex when the county had the municipal boroughs, the inner part of the county were suburbs to London
You're referring to the creation of the London Borough of Barnet in 1965 of course, but looking back further it get more complex, as Monken Hadley was originally part of Middlesex, and the boundary between Hertfordshire and Middlesex ran across Barnet High Street (roughly where The Spires and Boots are now located) until it was moved further north in 1889.
@@mbrady2329 so Hadley Wood was historically in Middlesex then? It's confusing as Hadley Wood is in the town of Chipping Barnet, which the town itself was in Hertfordshire.
Thanks very much for this wonderful video of High Barnet tube station. I just love all your videos of the various underground stations in the London area.
The loo there is welcome. Not too much room in the car park, one has to get there early and keep strictly within the marked lines! The turning circle built for the trolleybuses by the church is still there, as it is at East Finchley.
My old grandpappy was born here in the 1880s. But this is the first time I've really looked at the town's geography. GP's family were living out at the west edge of town which looks to be a million miles from the railways. I would think residents over time would be very disappointed at all the 'extensions' that were mooted but never happened.
On the Long Island Railroad,there are several stations on the Oyster Bay,and Port Jefferson branches that are rather far,or near to their respective towns! Port Jefferson has a rather steep hill between the station,and the town[ real mountain goat territory],plus at the town proper,there is the Ferry to Bridgeport(Connecticut)! Anyway,it's one of those places that is worthwhile for a day trip,out on the Long Island,return via MetroNorth,and do the circle! There is quite a bit of Long Island Sound,most people never see,and Connecticut has some interesting scenery,especially around Greenwich!
Fun fact: "Chipping" has nothing to do with chips. It is from the same root as "cheap", which despite its Modern English meaning originally meant simply "to buy". Other Germanic languages still use related words in this meaning, e.g. "kaufen" in German and "köpa" in Swedish. Why English came to use "buy" in this meaning is a mystery -- it also comes from a Germanic root but has no surviving relatives in any other Germanic language. I'll get me coat.
So that's where 'Mealcheapen Street' comes from. I though it was a notorious place of selling contraband grains but it just seems now like it was an ordinary cereals exchange site.
The proposal for apartments right next to the station on what is now a parking lot sounds like excellent modern planning for density around stations (unless it was also terrible, which it would not have to be).
Ngaio Marsh, writer of detective novels, gave a small fictional town in one of her books (Overture to Death, I think) the name Chipping. She was from New Zealand and either didn’t know that Chipping is a prefix, or didn’t care.
As a teenager of the late 80's, early 90's, who lived on Cat Hill in Barnet, and had access to Cockfosters (on foot) or Oakwood/High Barnet as my 'nearest' stations via bus, for a night out in London... Well, with scarce braincells at the time, and zero access to google maps, the choice of which station to get to by bus or otherwise for the fastest or most direct route, was not as cut and dried as it might seem now!
I love the rainy day scenes, the are so . . . uh . . . refreshing. Unlike sunny scenes, who, when viewed, make it seem being a tourist on a sightseeing tour, the rain gives an impression of witnessing local all-day life ❗ 👌😀👍
Interesting that you mention York in this video Jago. Apparently High Barnet is named because it's the highest land between High Barnet and York (there was a redevelopment opposite the station a long time ago that had this on display). Which makes you realise just how flat that area north is, and why the ECML takes the route it does (and the Great North Road before it). Also, it's a surprise that the path doesn't have a DDA compliant double handrail.
Thank you for this beautiful and interesting video. Not for the first time have I noticed that you have had some really poor weather for your shoots - it can't be particularly pleasant standing on a platform in the pouring rain, trying to get the perfect shot of a train leaving the station.
@@emjayay It doesn't rain in England half as much as people think (I've just had to water my lawn for the third time in the last few weeks as we haven't had any meaningful rain for most of May!). But what we do get is a lot of cloud - i.e. no sun. It's that that makes people think it rains more than it actually does. I happen to have a home in Eastern Hungary, as well as in SE England - two entirely different climates, and yet the two towns I live in get almost exactly the same rainfall - it just comes at different times and in different amounts!
Thank you Jago. Great video as ever. One of these trips to the UK I promise myself that I will ride the tube and visit all these sites that you video & I left so long ago!
I used to work in that tower in Croydon that you called the "Thrupnybit". We called it the 50p building. Didn't know it had any other name (apart from it's official boring name of No.1 Croydon).
“Say ‘hi, Barnet!’ at High Barnet” - marketing people, probably. I once rode the entire length of the Northern Line, Morden to High Barnet and back again, for a football match. We lost. Never doing that again!
I was told that the gap in the housing at the top of Shillitoe Avenue, Potters Bar almost opposite the junction of Mimms Hall Road was for the station building of an extended Northern Line from high Barnet. All it ever got was a bus stop.
Isn't that the original school building for Queen Elizabeth's Boys Grammar School at 1:06? Yes you can see 1573 over the door - the year in which it was founded!!
I know it’s now green belt. But they should build the northern heights scheme to the 1930’s plan and connect it to the northern city line. Muswell Hill has hideous connections to the underground. The bushy are near the track could still have some walking tracks installed.
Yay my local tube station - yippee ! If I'd known you were coming Jago I'd have made you a cuppa ! 😅 PS : My wife used to be a bell-ringer in St John the Baptist church (shown at 1:39).
How very interesting! I always thought it a bit of a misnomer, given that you have to walk down to High Barnet station, but then if that part of Chipping is high, I guess that explains it. I've only ever got out there once, and it'll be getting on for 40 years ago, so perhaps a repeat visit is called for! What I do remember is getting a surprise treat in the form of a train of 1938 stock train on the way back to London, when there were only a few in use anywhere at that time! Wasn't there also a station named Friern Barnet - or was that just for the benefit of the former hospital?
So High Barnet is some distance (vertically and horizontally) from Chipping Barnet, an historic market town. So, what’s wrong with additional development around it?
I've read that High Barnet's railway was meant to be extended to Potter's Bar. This may hark back to the old GNR scheme? Chipping has the same origin as cheap, that is, a market. Hence, Cheapside in London is where the market was.
High Barnet on the Northern Line could extend to New Barnet and to have a interchange with the Northern Line and National Rail service (GTR Great Northern and Thameslink). Just like the Piccadilly Line that could extend from Cockfosters to Potters Bar and crossing into Hertfordshire with a tunnel to pass underneath the M25 London Orbital Motorway. But that’s never going to happen.
An extension from High Barnet to New Barnet is essentially a proposal to add a roller coaster to the end of the Northern Line. New is 'behind' and a long way down from High.
"Today, I find myself at one of the extremities of the Northern Line. High Barnet" Sounds like you must have had quite the Saturday night! Where did it begin? Pink Elephant and Castle Lager?
“Today, I find myself at one of the extremities of the Northern Line. High Barnet. Sounds like you must have had quite the Saturday night! Where did it begin? Pink Elephant 🐘 and Castle 🏰 Lager 🍺? 🩵🩵 🎯
Good video. As someone towards the other end of the line High Barnet is somewhere I am very aware of but in a purely theoretical sense. Insert my standard "nothing can be built in this nightmare city and that's why the slums are back" rant here re trying to build on the car park...
If we're serious about solving many housing and transport issues then affordable dense urban housing needs to be built around all tube stations, what makes cities interesting is the new next to the old. Central London was once just a small hamlet!
We don't need to change the character of the suburbs. Reduce levels of immigration and demand for housing will be less. It would benefit from a better bus interchange though.
@@obsessivelocust UK URGENTLY needs MORE immigration. We URGENTLY need migrants just to pick food for us to eat! Unprecedented amounts of food is rotting in fields, massively exacerbating the COLC. We have huge skills shortages in all building trades, alongside medicine, veterinary, retail and hospitality. The 'character' of any neighbourhood is how it grows, how it changes, how it adopts and caters for different era's, how architecture is re-purposed. How it develops and grows or sometimes shrinks and has to be downsized. Times change and our infrastructure and architecture MUST change with these times.
@@coolbreez773 You obviously don't understand the character of historic towns like Barnet. Being on the edge of a city does not mean a town should be forced to succumb to the urban sprawl of vast low-build quality crime-ridden developments that have already blighted the inner suburbs and robbed them of the small amount of character they had left. We can train and inspire our own population without importing more people, which has already been disastrous for the native culture and quality of life, especially in London. Look at Japan as an example of a culture that has preserved its uniqueness into the 21st century without major levels of immigration, despite facing the same demographic challenges as Western nations. Only people with an agenda who are not at the coal-face of the harms caused by immigration can look at the UK net immigration figures and think that is a desirable thing for our country.
@@obsessivelocust You obviously don't understand districts continually change and adopt to meet the needs of its people. This includes re-purposing and preserving historic architecture, building social housing and new infrastructure. eg London could not remain a square mile. As I've already explained, long term we could train our 'natives' But in the short term we URGENTLY need more migrants. Food is rottening away in fields and our 'natives' are STARVING! London is a HUGE success because of immigration. The city's diverse cultures have only made London more global, recognised, stronger, interesting and prosperous than ever. What's stopping London grow more is brexit, halts on mass infrastructure projects, poor public services and the destruction of social housing.
@@coolbreez773 From your profile, you don't even live in London, so talk to me when you do, in social housing like me subject to almost daily threats and intimidation by the immigrants that you say bring 'success' (easy to believe if you live in a white middle class enclave in Sheffield, far away from actually ever having to interact with them).
Arnos Grove car park is no more, there will be a block of flats in its place. It is only a matter of time before the same happens to High Barnet. In fact, anywhere you see a car park in London, twenty to thirty years from now, will be built upon.
@@hb1338 not necessarily, with good town planning and good public transport, people need far fewer cars. Cars are choking our roads and cities - and most of them don't even move anywhere most days (although, of course they each need at least two parking spaces). Cars are a luxury - a convenience - we cannot afford. We've sacrificed our towns and cities to them, concreted over millions of acres of land for them, killed our children with them - and now they are helping us destroy the world. We have to learn to live with very much fewer of them.
Urghh I remember having to use New Barnet in 2002-2003 and the WAGN trains leaked when it rained and they would just skip the station if the train was running late (only on the way home) - oh and they would only bother to announce it after the train has passed.
Barnet looks lovely I must visit one day. Also my old boss lived in Barnet He was always calling hair "your barnet' I thought it was hilarious for some reason, now I know it's rhyming slang for Barnet Fair, however I m wondering if he knew about the fair part, because he and others only said barnet I guess I 'll never know.
'What I would give to live in my old housing estate again, man, if homesickness could kill.' Is how I feel but even still reality must take its rightful place. Even if they're not council housing they'd still be tower blocks and blocks of flats.
I don’t know, I think a small cluster of 3-5 storey flats could be done very sympathetically with the area, and probably look much nicer than a bunch of car parking.
An extension beyond High Barnet to where? The High Street isn't far away enough, any farther is greenbelt land, and since the current station isn't atop the hill it'd have to go into tunnel. Where was/is the ROI?
The plans pre-dated Green belt legislation, so there was every prospect of more housing being built further north if tghe line had been extended. Thye Green belt killed off the idea, as it did the extension beyond Edgware and verious other lines (e.g Chessington to Leatherhead)
I wonder if the heights will ever come back on the table as an extension? I mean, probably not but it just seemed sensible. (when has that ever had anything to do with the tube). High Barnet looks cute.
It would require changes to current green belt legislation, since extending beyond Edgware and High Barnet was reliant on the ability to develop further outside of London to provide demand for services that far out... what I'd be inclined to suggest instead is an orbital route across the top of London, taking over the Mill Hill east branch, then extending to Mill Hill Broadway, Edgware, Stamore and then to either Harrow and Wealdstone or Watford... possibly not as a tube route so as to minimise cost and disruption, I'm wondering whether a tram route would serve best here
@@MercenaryPen Tram route might work. I was just thinking they'd built a bit of the infrastructure which was never connected up. Maybe there might come a time to do it. It seems to be one of things the UK is good at (and that includes roads as well), starting a project, building bits of it, and then never completing it and maybe never using the bits youve built. (Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on the uK as Tim Traveller comes across similar bits in the EU )
@@MercenaryPen I was thinking about the Southern End of the Northern Line that Jago mentioned a few weeks back. I had forgotten about the Mill Hill to Edgware and Beyond proposals, Given how we now have the Battersea Power Station Segment to balance in part the load from the north does that make that Edgware route more feasible. With both Sutton Extention on the Northern Line and a handy South Wimbledon-Merton Park-Wimbledon-Clapham Junction -Battersea Power Station Loop (actually better to have Stations at Durnsford Road (or Leopold Road (could be done with siting underground platforms under Dundonald Road Tramstop with escalators down from there and Wimbledon, and again the platforms under Gap Road Cemetary with access from Leopold Road and Durnsford Road ) , Wandsworth Garrett Lane (there are development proposals for the King Henry Estate into the Airfix Factory Site ),
Doubt it. The M1 is in the way. You can sort of see the tunnels dug for the NHE now severed by the Motorway cutting..The arches on Spur Road were finally demolished only about 30y ago.
It seems to me that anytime something is dubious mysterious or quirky it almost always includes the Northern line . Could you find out right and wrong ❓️
