Barton Mills is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

West Suffolk district West Suffolk District is a local government district in Suffolk, England, which was established on 1 April 2019, following the merger of the existing Forest Heath district with the borough of St Edmundsbury. The two councils had already had a ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. The village is on the south bank of the River Lark. According to

Eilert Ekwall Bror Oscar Eilert Ekwall (born 8 January 1877 in Vallsjö (now in Sävsjö, Jönköpings län), Sweden, died 23 November 1964 in Lund, Skåne län, Sweden), known as Eilert Ekwall, was Professor of English at Sweden's Lund University from 1909 t ...

the meaning of the village name is 'corn farm by the mill'. The village was originally called Barton Parva (Little Barton). The name changed to Barton Mills in the eighteenth century. The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 records the population of the village in 1086 to be 22 households. The village is near the Fiveways Roundabout, a busy junction where the A11 London to Norwich trunk road, the A1065 towards North Norfolk and the A1101 (Long Sutton (Lincolnshire) to Bury St. Edmunds) roads meet. The village was once the holiday retreat for

Alexander Fleming Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what ...

, the discoverer of

penicillin Penicillins (P, PCN or PEN) are a group of β-lactam antibiotics originally obtained from '' Penicillium'' moulds, principally '' P. chrysogenum'' and '' P. rubens''. Most penicillins in clinical use are synthesised by P. chrysogenum usin ...

, and there is a plaque on the wall outside his country home, The Dhoon, in the main street. Barton Mills hosts a biannual

Scarecrow A scarecrow is a decoy or mannequin, often in the shape of a human. Humanoid scarecrows are usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields to discourage birds from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.Lesle ...

Festival, held in July. The main road through the village is closed to traffic (except to residents) during the two-day-long festival, which includes musical bands, food, dancing, car boot sales at the local playing fields and viewing scarecrows created by local residents. This festival has been featured in the ''Guinness Book of World Records'', boasting the most scarecrows ever made at any one time. The record is currently held by the National Forest Adventure Farm near

Burton on Trent Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In 2011, it had a population of 72,299. The d ...

Church

Barton Mills is served by the Church of St Mary as its parish church, a building dating back 800 years. Giacomo Savelli, who became

Pope Honorius IV Pope Honorius IV (c. 1210 – 3 April 1287), born Giacomo Savelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 April 1285 to his death in 1287. During his pontificate he largely continued to pursue the pro-French poli ...

in 1285 was rector of Barton Mills church at the time of his election to the papacy, although there is no evidence that he ever visited

References

External links

www.bartonmills.net
* Villages in Suffolk Forest Heath Civil parishes in Suffolk {{Suffolk-geo-stub