Chipping Barnet
area in the London Borough of Barnet, England, United Kingdom
Chipping Barnet or High Barnet is a suburban market town in north London, forming part of the London Borough of Barnet, England. It is a suburban development built around a 12th-century settlement, and is located 10+1⁄2 miles (17 km) north of Charing Cross, 3 miles (4.8 km) east from Borehamwood, 5.2 miles (8.4 km) west from Enfield and 3.2 miles (5.1 km) south from Potters Bar. Its population, including its localities East Barnet, New Barnet, Hadley Wood, Monken Hadley, Cockfosters and Arkley, was 47,359 in 2011.
Its name is very often abbreviated to just Barnet, which is also the name of the borough of which it forms a part; the town has been part of Greater London since 1965, after the abolition of Barnet Urban District, then in Hertfordshire. Chipping Barnet is also the name of the Parliamentary constituency covering the local area: the word "Chipping" denotes the presence of a market, one that was established here at the end of the 12th century and persists to this day. Chipping Barnet is one of the highest urban settlements in London, with the town centre having an elevation of about 427 feet (130 m).
History
The town's name, recorded as Barneto in about 1070, Barnet in 1197, and La Barnette in 1248, is derived from Old English bærnet: "the land cleared by burning". It refers to the clearing of land in an area that was once densely forested.
In Saxon times the site was part of an extensive wood called Southaw, belonging to the Abbey of St Albans. Barnet's elevated position is indicated in one of its alternative names ("High Barnet"), which appears in many old books and maps, and which the Great Northern Railway company adopted for the railway station opened in 1872 (now High Barnet tube station).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Chipping Barnet” as area in the London Borough of Barnet, England, United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2884709. VIAF identifies the subject as 140687691. The Library of Congress control number is n50026613. Authority coordinates are 51.644, -0.200. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1965, 1070 and 1197.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chipping Barnet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.