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