Living in Barnet

Barnet is London's most populous borough, a vast area of suburbs stretching from the edge of Hampstead Heath to the Hertfordshire countryside. It includes busy centres such as Finchley, Hendon and Golders Green, quieter suburbs such as Mill Hill, Totteridge and Edgware, and the historic market town of High Barnet at its northern tip. Much of the north of the borough is protected green belt.

Both northern branches of the Northern line end in Barnet, at Edgware and High Barnet, and Thameslink serves Hendon, Mill Hill Broadway and the new Brent Cross West station. That makes the borough well connected to the West End and City along its north–south corridors, but east–west journeys are slower, and the North Circular and M1 carry heavy traffic through the south of the borough.

Barnet has one of the largest Jewish communities in Britain, concentrated in Golders Green, Hendon, Finchley and Edgware, alongside substantial Indian, Chinese, Iranian, Korean and Eastern European communities. It is known for strong schools, including several highly regarded state and grammar schools, which makes it popular with families.

Hampstead Garden Suburb, the early twentieth-century planned suburb of Arts and Crafts houses, lies on the borough's southern edge, and the Brent Cross regeneration is creating a new town centre with homes and offices in the south-west. The borough's green spaces include Hampstead Heath Extension, Dollis Valley Greenwalk, Mill Hill Park and Totteridge's fields. In practice, people choose Barnet for what a Northern line suburb gives a household — a garden, a school place, a quieter street — and accept that a night out usually means a train back into Camden or the West End.