College Farm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
College Farm is the last farm in Finchley, London, England It is essentially a city farm and visitor attraction.
In 1868 George Barham (founder of Express Dairies) leased a property of about 97 acres in Finchley called Sheephouse Farm. In 1882/83 he had it rebuilt by a Fradrick Chancellor as a model dairy farm renaming it after Christ's College Finchley College Farm. By the 1900s the company believed that farm would not be viable as a real farm, so it was decided to addapt it to become visitor centre in 1909, buying out the lease on the property of the farm buildings, and retaining a handful of the adjacent fields from the origianal estate. By the 1930s the residue of the farm was surrounded houses, and was organised for public visitor, with tea rooms and an exhibition of objects related to the dairy industry. In 1973 the Express Dairy company left the site, and the dairy museum was broken up. In 1974 the Department of the Environment purchased the estate and with intention of giving it to the London Borough of Barnet in exchange for open land at Henly’s Corner needed for a flyover (which was never built). The farm was leased by Chris and Jane Ower, who ran it successfully as a popular local attraction from 1980 until February 2001, when an outbreak of foot and mouth disease meant the site had to be closed. With the support of local organisations such as the Finchley Society, the College Farm Trust was set up in 2004 with the intention of re-establishing it as visitor centre, and by June 2005 there was cattle in the fields between Regents Park Road and the farm.
