Late 1800s
Gentleman farms
The rolling, oak-covered hills drew affluent Chicago families looking for a summer retreat. They bought farms, built estates and hired managers to run them, and the railroad let them live here and work in the city.
The countryside
Farmers settled this area in the 1830s. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries its hills, oak groves and kettle lakes were drawing well-off Chicago families, who bought farms, built estates and ran them as gentleman farms. The Chicago and North Western Railway made it possible to live out here and work downtown.
A Bohemian chapel
In 1867, 18 Bohemian immigrant families founded St. John Nepomucene church and cemetery on the high ground at Algonquin and Church roads. The first burial was around 1871, an 1872 plat shows the chapel complete, and a bell was installed in 1874. The parish never had a resident priest. The chapel has been closed for regular worship since 1914, and today it sits inside Barrington Hills, opened each Labor Day for a Mass honoring its founders.
Clubs before a village
In 1921 a group of Chicago businessmen bought 220 acres for the Barrington Hills Country Club. Its farmhouse-style clubhouse burned in 1930, and a new one designed by Robert Work opened on September 7, 1931. The Riding Club followed in 1937, laying out trails across private land, and in 1938 residents formed the Countryside Property Owners Association.
Incorporation
In the mid-1950s developers bought several thousand acres to the south for subdivisions of quarter-acre lots. To keep the five-acre minimum, attorney Andrew Dallstream organized neighbors to petition for incorporation, and the Village of Barrington Hills was incorporated on July 5, 1957. Middlebury, incorporated in 1953, was annexed in December 1962.
Parks and preserves
The Barrington Hills Park District was organized on July 19, 1967, and the Riding Club transferred the Riding Center property to it on October 26, 1972. More than 5,000 acres of forest preserve now lie inside the village. The Country Club marked its centennial in 2021 and opened a new pool and the Oaks Pavilion in 2024.
Source: Village of Barrington Hills: Our History · Barrington Area Library: St. John Nepomucene · Barrington Hills Country Club: History · Village of Barrington Hills: Comprehensive Plan · Barrington Hills Park District: Riding Center