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The search is on for Enfield residents who have previously worked at Forty Hall Farm, or anyone who has memories of the Farm and its history.

Land girls in Southgate Park, during WWII. Source: Enfield Local Studies Centre.

Thanks to funding from the Enfield Society, Forty Hall Farm in north Enfield has been awarded a project grant to produce a series of information boards for visitors, to tell the history of the Farm and farming in Enfield.

Farm manager Kate McGeevor explains: “The Farm has been open to the public for several years, but we have not been very good at telling our visitors about the development and history of the Farm. Our generous grant from the Enfield Society will change that, allowing us to produce and install a series of information boards to tell the Farm’s history. We already have some information about how the Farm has developed over the years and have also gathered lots of useful information from the Local Archives at the Dugdale Centre. But what we really want to hear and collect are people’s memories of the Farm, especially from those who might have worked here over the years.”

Forty Hall Farm is run by Capel Manor College, the only further education college in London specialising in learning about the environment, who use the Farm as an educational centre for student practical sessions.

The Farm is part of the Forty Hall Estate and would have originally been a home farm, producing food for the people who lived and worked on the Estate. Since the 1950s, the Farm has been run as a separate agricultural business, with several tenant farmers leasing it over the years.