A railway suburb
New Barnet grew up around the Great Northern Railway, which opened its line here in 1850 with a station about a mile from High Barnet's town centre. An 1876 guidebook called it a half-finished railway village. Building picked up towards the end of the century, leaving late Victorian villas and terraces, Edwardian detached houses, post-war council housing and, later, low-rise flats.
From 1894 the area was part of East Barnet Urban District in Hertfordshire, and it only became part of Greater London in 1965.
East Barnet
East Barnet is older still. The church of St Mary the Virgin on Church Hill traces its first chapel to around 1080, and its north wall is said to survive from that building. The church is Grade II* listed. Around it, the village has grown into a residential area of houses and flats stretching towards Cockfosters and Oakleigh Park.
What this means for your worktops
In Victorian and Edwardian houses, walls are seldom square, so templating is essential: the stone is cut to follow the wall. Kitchens at the back of a terrace often mean a long carry down a narrow hall, which can decide where joins go.
Many people in New Barnet live in flats, including the 1960s and 1970s office blocks on Station Road that have mostly been converted to apartments. If yours is one of them, let us know the floor, the size of the lift and any building rules on deliveries. Some leases also need the freeholder's go-ahead before kitchen works, so it is worth a look.
Replacement or new kitchen
A lot of our work here is replacing worktops on existing units, swapping laminate for quartz or granite without a full refit. For a new kitchen, templating happens after the units are in and level and the sink and hob have been picked.
Hard water
The water here is about as hard as London gets: a 2024 comparison put Barnet first of 32 boroughs. That is a good reason to favour a surface that won't etch, such as quartz, granite or porcelain, and to run a stone upstand or splashback behind the sink so there is no grout for scale to settle in.
Questions from New Barnet and East Barnet
Do you cover Cockfosters and Oakleigh Park too?
Yes. Both have their own pages: see Cockfosters and Oakleigh Park.
Can stone go into a converted office flat on Station Road?
Yes. Tell us the floor and lift details so we can plan the pieces and the delivery.
Do Victorian houses cause problems for stone worktops?
Not if the kitchen is templated. Walls that lean or bow are normal in older houses; the template follows them so the worktop fits tight.
Sources
Links to other organisations are for further reading and do not imply any connection with them.