The 34-year battle to save College Farm in Finchley has finally been won after it was purchased by a charitable trust on Thursday last week.

The College Farm Trust had spent nine years trying to buy the Grade II-listed community farm, in Fitzalan Road, which dates back to the 14th Century. Until the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, the farm was open to visitors for educational visits. The current farm buildings were built on the site in 1883 when it was used for milk production by Express Dairy.

Until the trust purchase, the farm was owned by the Highways Agency as a result of an aborted land-swap deal dating back to 1972. The Department of Transport had planned to widen the North Circular Road and bought the farm to exchange it for council land needed for the road expansion, which never went ahead.

Since 1972, there have been several campaigns to save the farm, including an appeal led by comedian Spike Milligan on Esther Rantzen's That's Life television programme in the 1980s.

Its future seemed assured in June 2000, when Finchley & Golders Green MP Rudi Vis secured a binding promise from Government minister Keith Hill to sell the land to a charitable trust for £500,000 - £900,000 less than the then market value. But the 2005 deadline set by Mr Hill to sell the land came and went without the trust being able to secure the necessary cash.

The Highways Agency agreed to extend the deadline four times before officially withdrawing its offer to sell the site to the trust earlier this year. However, in January this year a newly formed trust, including chairman Phil Green, advisor Peter Faulkner and Mr Vis, along with the help of agricultural tenants Chris and Jane Ower, was able to secure a deal. Using funds from a mystery benefactor', who agreed to buy two flats on the site of the farm, the trust was finally able to buy the site outright.

Trust chairman Mr Green said it had been a tight deal' rendering little if any profit.

He said: "We are delighted. We're now at the stage where we have come out of the other side having secured the farm.

"We now need to start looking at how to move forward and create funding for development and get the farm open to the public. We've had a good team in place since January with a large range of expertise and advice."

Although remaining tight-lipped about the buyer of the flats, he said: "The funding was a structured deal but commercially confidential. It was a tight deal. The sale of the flats secured the purchase of the farm."

Mr Green will now push ahead with plans to build a museum and educational facilities, restock the farm with livestock and re-open it to the public and local schools as an example of a working farm. He added that he hopes to have it completed within a couple of years.

Mr Ower, who has been the tenant farmer there since 1976, said: "This is a fantastic result for College Farm."