PROJECTS

A major part of our ongoing activity is carrying out projects of various kinds.  These include:

• Detailed investigations into the history of various buildings or organisations, and producing reports of the findings, which are retained in our archives

• Ongoing recording of changes in the area, whether domestic, retail or industrial. As well as major shopping centres at North Finchley (154 shops) and Whetstone (104 shops), shops are to be found in Friern Barnet Road and Woodhouse Road (123 shops), Oakleigh Road (52 shops) and Colney Hatch Lane (39 shops).  Once a year we survey all of them and add them to our database, which goes back to 1924 and includes information gleaned from Kelly’s Directories of the period to the 1960s.  This database enables us to keep track of changing shopping habits and to see how things have altered over the last 80 years

• Collating various other information of interest, such as famous people who had a connection with the area

• We are currently working on a history of electric street traction in the area.  Metropolitan Electric Tramways (MET) ran trams from 1905 to 1938, when they were replaced by trolleybuses.  These, in turn, were replaced by Routemaster buses in 1962 

• We have a number of other projects in progress, including histories of:

                  Finchley Memorial Hospital

                  New Southgate Gas Works

                  Friary Park

                  New Southgate Cemetery (formerly the Great Northern Cemetery)

                  John Dale Ltd

                  Our local churches

                  Our local schools