College Farm

College Farm driveway

College Farm is the last farm in Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet. It currently trades as an equestrian and pet store. It is located in Regents Park Road, close to Henlys Corner. In 1868 George Barham, founder of Express Dairies, leased Sheephouse Farm, a property of about 97 acres (390,000 m2). In 1882/83 he had it rebuilt by Fredrick Chancellor as a model dairy farm, renaming it College Farm after the nearby Christ's College.

By the 1900s the company believed that the farm was not viable as a real farm, so it was decided to adapt it to become a visitor attraction in 1909, buying out the lease on the property of the farm buildings, and retaining a few of the adjacent fields from the original estate.

By the 1930s the residue of the farm was surrounded by houses, and was open to the public, with tea rooms and an exhibition of objects related to the dairy industry. In the 1950s and 1960s cows were grazed and milked on the site by Express Dairies. In 1973 Express Dairies left the site, and the dairy museum was broken up.

In 1974 the Department of the Environment purchased the estate with the intention of giving it to the London Borough of Barnet in exchange for open land at Henlys Corner intended for a flyover, which was never built. The farm was leased by Chris and Jane Ower, who ran it as a popular local attraction from 1980 until February 2001, when the site had to be closed because of restrictions caused by the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Chris Ower, with the support of some local residents and friends of the farm, set up the College Farm Trust in 2004 with the intention of re-establishing the farm as a visitor centre. The Trust now owns the whole site and is working to raise the funds to reopen to the public.

College Farm is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation.[1] It also has a silo which is a Grade II listed building.[2]

Coordinates: 51°35′35″N 0°12′07″W / 51.593°N 0.202°W / 51.593; -0.202

See also

References

  1. ↑ "College Farm". Greenspace Information for Greater London. 2006. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  2. ↑ "SILO AT COLLEGE FARM". English heritage.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/7/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.