Hadley Wood News February/March 2017

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If this month’s maga-
zine looks a little ama-
teurish, it has been de-
signed ‘in house’ in
order to try and save
the HWA some money.
About a third of Hadley Wood’s
population support the HWA and
it’s village hall and grounds by be-
coming members. Their annual
contribution of £50 per household
pays for the maintenance of the
building (at the far end of the ten-
nis courts) its kindergarten, ballet
school, tennis and football clubs.
Even more importantly their con-
tributions help maintain the
grounds. All 23 acres between the
HWA and the primary school, the
woods over the tunnel and the
huge field at Bartrams lane. We
rent all this from Enfield Council
and have done so since the 50’s.
Unless more of you join we may
have difficulty renewing our lease.
Then the area would revert to En-
field Council and housing develop-
ment would be hard to resist. So if
you enjoy the green spaces, use the
car park or belong to any of the
HWA clubs and are not members
PLEASE join. £1 a week is not
much to ask. Telephone Louise on
0208449 7193. Leave a message
and she will arrange a direct debit.
Rod Armstrong Editor.
Hadley Wood Neighbourhood
Plan
Work on our neighbourhood plan
has been slow but steady. A draft
outline was presented at the Had-
ley Wood Association meeting in
November. This included a list of
policy areas covering things like
house extensions, new build and
tree planting. We need someone
to write up our policy ideas in
full and create a coherent draft
Plan. Once we have this, we will
need to gather opinions on the
draft plan from as many people
who live and work in the area as
possible. Does anyone want to
organise our consultations? We
also need to pull together evidence
to support our plan, to explain why
our policies are sensible and how
they project local feelings and as-
pirations. We have survey results,
commentaries and so on, but we
need someone to take these, add
to them, and make them into a
proper document. Having a
Neighbourhood Plan makes us eli-
gible for a slice of the money peo-
ple pay when they extend their
homes or create new build-
ings. This is called the Communi-
ty Infrastructure Levy
(CIL). Although CIL has only
been in operation for about a year,
and it is hard to know exactly how
it will work, the Council kindly
gave us an estimate of the type of
amounts we could be looking at in
the future. For example, if we had
our Plan in place now, 25% of CIL
could be put towards local pro-
jects, set out in our Plan. Over 5
years this could amount to over a
quarter of a million pounds. We
need someone to keep an eye on
this, talking to the Council about
how to make the system work
best, and organising how we de-
cide on spending the money in
the future. So all in all, we need
help to finish our Neighbour-
hood Plan. If anyone would
like to take on the
above tasks, or would like to
see the draft material we
have so far, please email
hadleywood-
plan@gmail.com
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Thymari 18 Crescent West
Under New Management
Paul and Christina Argyrou, are the new
owners of Thymari. Respectively from
Toronto (Canada) and Hadley Wood.
After University both worked in the City
as Traders (Foreign Exchange and Equi-
ty) but their passion for great food and
years of dining at many of London’s fin-
est spots inspired them to jump ship
from the finance industry to Hadley
Wood’s only restaurant. Both have a
Greek-Cypriot heritage and with great
knowledge of the cuisine their aim is to
offer high quality and authentic Greek
food in a more modern light, as it has
evolved in Greece and Cyprus but less
so in the suburbs of London.
The new Thymari offers a
warm and inviting home from
home setting, a versatile menu
and aims to be the local hub
where customers can enjoy
both a celebratory gourmet
meal or just drop in for a quick
drink or a coffee (with no re-
quirement to eat a meal). Hav-
ing two young children them-
selves, Paul and Christina wel-
come families and offer a
healthy and affordable chil-
dren’s menu too. Currently,
they are open from 5.30pm on
weekdays (closed Monday)
On Saturdays they open from
12:30pm till midnight and are
open for lunch on Sunday.
Weekend Breakfast is likely to
be offered soon and if this is
popular it may be something
they’ll offer during the week .
Tel. 0208 275 0268
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BOOKINGS@THYMARI.CO.UK

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2016 in pictures
Photos by John
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Station Cuttings – New Year,
New Entrance, New Station
Manager
Let’s start with the good news:
GTR expect the 8-week scheme to
install our step-free entrance to the
northbound platform to begin in
early February. Enfield Council
has already provided a new disa-
bled parking bay in anticipation.
The Rail User Group (RUG) met
on 1st
February to review the plans
and also welcomed Martin Brown,
who has just replaced Duncan
Primrose as our Station Manager.
We still await a response from
GTR to the petition and dossier we
presented to them on 7th
December
under the benign gaze of Sir Nigel
Gresley (see photo) in response to
their 2018 Timetable Consultation.
The tremendous tally of 3,500 sig-
natures reflects both the degree of
concern about GTR’s proposals
and the huge effort by RUG mem-
bers in collecting them. We have
also briefed our MPs, Enfield
Council and London Assembly
members as well as the Transport
Minister, TfL, London Travel
Watch and Transport Focus. Our
case for a full Great Northern
Metro service focusses on Hadley
Wood’s unique combination of cir-
cumstances: Isolation, Oysterand
Accessibility. We are an isolated
community within the Greater Lon-
don Oyster zone where GTR is
about to invest a significant sum in
their first step-free entrance on this
section of the line.
GTR’s initial proposals were how-
ever based on footfall. Latest offi-
cial ORR footfall figures published
in December show an encouraging-
ly “large” increase of 12.3% to
405,660 for 2015/16. We believe
that this is still an underestimate
because of the unrecorded usage of
season tickets and Freedom Pass-
es here. Apparently GTR is now
undertaking incognito surveys of
usage here, especially of the off-
peak trains, so please keep using
them to support our case for a
metropolitan service throughout
the day, every day.
Turning to the current service, if
you should find yourself caught
in disruption, do take the trouble
to complain and claim. The
RUG has launched its own app to
collect data on the impact of dis-
ruption, and you can get it by
emailing “Bad Train Day” to
hadleywoodplan@gmail.com.
And GTR’s Delay Repay scheme
now compensates fordelays of
more than 15 minutes (except
when delays are caused by
planned engineering work).
However, if the disruption is so
bad that you need to take a cab
between the station and the tube
to complete your journey, then
please use the special arrange-
ments we’ve negotiated with
GTR for complex claims be-
cause of our isolation: email
James.Ward@GTRailway.com
or write to him at GTR HQ Cus-
tomer Relations, 2nd
Floor, Mon-
ument Place, 24 Monument
Street, London EC3R 8AJ with
documentary evidence.
Finally, the RUG’s commemora-
tive plaque to iconic locomotive
engineer and former resident Sir
Nigel Gresley has been delivered
and we look forward to planning
two special events in the coming
months: unveiling of the plaque
on the station forecourt and inau-
guration of our step-free en-
trance. Please join the RUG to
strengthen our voice with GTR
while we negotiate with them
over the timetable: it’s free and
there are no obligations. Our
next meeting will be on Tues-
day 4th
April at 8pm at St
Paul’s Church.
Francesca Caine
Hadley Wood Rail User Group
Presenting Hadley Woods Petition on
the 2018 timetable proposals at Kings
Cross. L to R. Robert Wilson ,Gillian
Henley , Francesca Caine and Phil
Hutchinson GTR’s head of strategic
planning. Sir Nigel Gresley looks on.

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date on the archeological survey and
a visit to Barnet’s ancient ‘Physic
Well’ in the footsteps of the 17th
century diarist, Samuel Pepys; and
according to the local grapevine
there is even the possibility of a new
publication about Hadley Wood’s
little known but fascinating history
emerging in the months ahead…
John Hall
Letters to the Editor
Sir,
Following my usual daily walk
from my home in Hadley Wood to
Barnet and back I feel compelled to
write to express my disgust at the
state of our once beautiful neigh-
bourhood. When I first came to live
here almost twenty years ago the
streets were litter free and there was
very little disruption due to building
work. Today everywhere is littered
with empty beer cans, sandwich
wrappers, crisp packaging, cigarette
packets and drinks cartons. I appre-
ciate that building work is part of the
evolution of every suburb and I am
deliberately not complaining about
the road closures, traffic jams and
unsightly building sites we have to
live with. There is, however, no ex-
cuse for building workers littering
the streets or for that matter resi-
dents putting out overflowing bins
or black bags which the foxes and
birds will scatter far and wide.
Besides being against the law lit-
tering is antisocial and a sign of very
bad manners. What can we do to
solve this ongoing problem before
our beloved Hadley Wood turns into
a slum.
Michael N McCann.
36 Beech Hill Avenue.
EN4 0LU.
michaelnmccann@aol.com
Local History Talks
In September and Octo-
ber two local history
talks were given at St
Paul’s Church.
The first on the Battle of
Barnet was dedicated to the
memory of John Northam, a
former Chairman of the Hadley
Wood Association, Trustee of St
Paul’s Church and keen ama-
teur military historian. Local
resident, John Hall, Sam Wil-
son, battlefield archaeologist,
and Mike Noronha from Barnet
Museum spoke to a packed au-
dience about the background of
the Battle, what happened on
the day according to contempo-
rary sources, its importance in
English history and the progress
that is being made to survey the
battlefield site in order to find
its exact location. A paper on
the Battle was also published in
John Northam’s memory on the
Hadley Wood Association and
Barnet Museum websites. The
battlefield survey was featured
in December on BBC4’s
‘Digging for Britain’ and will
be resumed later this year.
The second talk was given by
John Leatherdale on the history
of Hadley Wood under the
thought provoking title, “a De-
velopment that Nearly Failed.”
Again to a full house, John
traced the history of the area
from the Ice Age to the opening
of the railways with a wonder-
ful display of maps, photo-
graphs and illustrations.
In response to popular demand
more local history events are
planned for 2017 to explore our
heritage, including more talks
about the famous Battle, an up-

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