IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference code(s): LMA/4070
Held at: London Metropolitan Archives
Title: BARNET PLANS
Date(s): 1879-1986
Level of description: Collection
Extent: 29.95 linear metres
Name of creator(s): London Borough of Barnet
CONTEXT
Administrative/Biographical history:
This collection consists of a large number of planning applications relating to buildings in north Middlesex. They were submitted over nearly a century and kept by the planning departments of Finchley, Friern Barnet and Hendon, and after 1965, by the London Borough of Barnet.
Whenever someone wished to build a new property or make alterations to an existing building they had to submit copies of plans of the scheme to the relevant local authority for approval. This collection is made up entirely of these plans and any other documents that were submitted at the time.
The period covered by the applications, the end of the nineteenth century to the 1980s was one that saw huge changes in the areas around London. Middlesex, to the north of the capital, had been a largely rural county with few small towns during the reign of Queen Victoria, but it developed over a short period in the first decades of the new century into a sprawling suburban environment. Farms and isolated villas had, by the 1930s, given way to new roads, housing and light industry.
CONTENT
Scope and content/abstract:
Plans submitted to the London Borough of Barnet and predecessor local authorities in Finchley, Friern Barnet and Hendon, 1879-1986. The plans show examples of a diverse range of architectural styles in domestic housing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are also many shops, factories and workshops, as well as public buildings such as schools, cinemas and churches, many of which still exist today.
The files are interesting for the insight they give to the planning process, showing what was and was not acceptable from a design and structural point of view. And as many of the earlier plans are for the most part hand drawn and coloured, they can be very decorative.
ACCESS AND USE
Language/scripts of material: English
System of arrangement:
The plans have been arranged in three series, based on their origins in the planning departments of the local authorities which, after 1965, became the London Borough of Barnet: LMA/4070/01: Finchley; LMA/4070/02: Friern Barnet; LMA/4070/03: Hendon.
Conditions governing access:
Available for general access
Conditions governing reproduction:
Copyright to these records rests with the Corporation of London.
Physical characteristics:
Fit
Finding aids:
Please see online catalogues at: http://search.lma.gov.uk/opac_lma/index.htm
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information:
The collection was reviewed over several months by a team of 5 archivists who examined and read each file. Only files considered worthy of long term retention were kept, rather than many thousands of similar applications for such things as loft extensions.
Accruals:
Archival history:
Immediate source of acquisition:
Received in 1998 (B98/048).
ALLIED MATERIALS
Existence and location of originals:
Existence and location of copies:
Related material:
Publication note:
DESCRIPTION NOTES
Note:
Date(s) of descriptions: April to June 2009