Shenley

Shenley was promised an annex when the old hospital estate went to the developers, and what arrived was a second village bolted onto the first, with its own walled garden, its own teashop and a water tower turned into flats. The old guard took it with the kind of trepidation usually reserved for a new roundabout. The eighteenth-century lock-up on London Road still has "BE SOBER. BE VIGILANT." carved above its barred openings, which remains the best advice going for anyone reading an estate agent's description of somewhere this close to Barnet as rural.