Barrington Hills is a village located about northwest of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. Per the 2020 census, the population was 4,114. It straddles approximately over four counties, Cook, Kane, Lake, and McHenry. The Village of Barrington Hills was incorporated in 1957. The suburban village is included in the greater Barrington area. Many very affluent residents live on large estates and commute to downtown Chicago. A minimum zoning restriction has been in effect on new construction since 1963, but the existence of equestrian farms antedates the village by decades. Farming and horse raising are allowed. Barrington Hills includes farms and estates such as Hill 'N Dale Farms, owned by Richard L. Duchossois, former owner of the Arlington Park racetrack, and the Bank Note Farm. The identification of the area with horses carries over to the names Broncos and Colts for school teams. History Barrington Center Church Barrington Center Church was built in 1853 by the Barrington Methodist Episcopal Society. A memorial plaque outside the church lists 91 area residents - one woman and 90 men - who served in the Civil War. Since the 1980s, the church building has been used by a Korean-American congregation, the New Friends Wesleyan Church. In 1860, about 18 immigrant families of Czech ancestry settled along the east side of the Fox River, near the future site of Fox River Grove. In 1867, land was purchased at the southwest corner of Church and River - Algonquin roads, and construction was started on St. John Nepomucene Chapel, named after the patron saint of Bohemia. Completed in 1873, the chapel was never served by its own priest, and currently services are scheduled only once a year. The chapel and its cemetery are owned by the St. John Nepomucene Catholic Cemetery Association, making it the only privately owned Catholic chapel and cemetery in the Rockford Diocese. Railroad and gentleman farms Starting about 1900, business executives from Chicago, many of whom were tied to the railroad industry, purchased the rolling farms and subdivided them into large summer estates. One such individual was Spencer C. Otis, who by 1910 is credited with purchasing of farmland along what was then Goose Lake Road but is now known as Otis Road and creating Hawthorne Farm. Otis was a "gentleman farmer" of the era. He worked in Chicago commerce, but his hobby was dairy farming on his large country estate. Several