The History of College Farm

As you travel towards Finchley from Golders Green, two fields rise gently up a slope, topped by the same, five-gabled, red-brick farm buildings that Sir George Barham, founder of the Express Dairy Company, built in 1883. This is College Farm; although the farmland is much reduced today it  remains a breath of country in a landscape once totally agricultural but now totally urbanised.

College Farm was mentioned as long ago as 1302, then known as Sheephouse Farm; the owner Henry De Byke, Lord of the Manor of Bibsworth, Finchley, grazed sheep there and collected the taxes on staples of wool for the whole Shire of Middlesex. The Express Dairy Company bought Sheephouse Farm in the 1860’s and renamed it College Farm because, from every field, you could see the copper top of Christ’s College in Hendon Lane, Finchley.

Sir George Barham, founder of Express Dairies, commissioned renowned architect Frederick Chancellor to draw up plans for a new, model dairy-farm on the land he had bought. This was to be a model to the dairy industry to promote hygiene which, at that time, was not a high priority in the London dairies. It was built by Steed Brothers of Camden in 1883 for £4,942.

The farm was stocked with Guernsey, Shorthorn and Kerry cattle, 40 in total. There were 4 Shire horses and many Roundsmen’s horses. The farm then opened to the public daily, as a public relations venture, to show the customers and the dairy industry the clean, healthy environment that the Express Dairy cows lived in.

College Farm was soon one of the sights of London. It was both a centre for Victorian family outings and a venue for visits by dairy trade experts from home and abroad. College Farm provided foundation stock for Guernsey herds all over the world, as many improvements to this breed were pioneered here. College Farm itself became known all over the world as Sir George Barham travelled to countries such as the U.S.A., India and Jamaica, to demonstrate the working of a model dairy, using this farm as an example.

By the 1900s the company believed that the farm was not viable as a real, working farm; in 1909 it was decided to adapt it to become a visitor attraction, 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 1973 Express Dairies left the site, and the dairy museum was broken up.
The most important function of College farm was as a public relations exercise and shop window for the whole dairy industry; it was conceived long before the phrase ‘public relations’ had been invented. Its contribution to London’s milk supply had been quite small in quantity but it’s importance was great: as a showplace of all that was newest and best in dairy livestock and equipment.

Sir George Barham was a man in many ways ahead of his time. He was innovative and a great many ‘firsts’ were pioneered at College Farm.

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