Earls Barton is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, notable for its Anglo-Saxon church and shoe-making heritage. The village is in North Northamptonshire and was previously in the Borough of Wellingborough until 2021. At the time of the 2011 census, the population was 5,387. Earls Barton is renowned for its remarkable Anglo-Saxon heritage. History The original Anglo-Saxon village was known as Bere-tun, or "a place for growing Barley", and was one of several Spring line settlements constructed along the north bank of the River Nene. Immediately prior to 1066, it was held by Bondi the staller, an Anglo-Danish noble, and senior member of Edward the Confessor's household; around 1070, it passed to Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria. In 1070, he married Judith of Lens, niece of William the Conqueror, recorded in the Domesday Book as owner of the land and mill of Buarton(e). He was made Earl of Northampton in 1071; it is thought these links, and those with the Earl of Huntingdon, later gave the village its prefix "Earls". In The King's England: Northamptonshire, edited by Arthur Mee, it notes: Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner disagrees with this assessment, describing it as: He goes on to argue that the castle was founded at the time of the Norman conquest of England and its builder ignored the then existing church, leaving it in its bailey, for a later demolition that never happened. In the 13th century, shoes began to be made from leather bought in nearby Northampton, while the village also had its own tanyard, which remained in operation until 1984. During the 14th and 15th centuries, sheep shearing gave way to the manufacture of woollen cloth, which remained a major cottage industry until the shift to the newly industrialised north several centuries later. Census data shows that from 1801 to 1850, the village population grew from 729 to over 2,000. In 1880, the Barker shoe company was founded in Earls Barton, and remains there to the present day. Between 1913 and 1921, ironstone was produced in two local quarries; the first, situated north of Doddington Road, began operations in 1913, the second in 1916, west of Wellingborough Road. A 3-foot gauge tramway connected both quarries to the northern terminal of the gas-powered aerial ropeway, where the ore was loaded into buckets. It was then taken across the River Nene to Castle Ashby and Earls Barton station, and dumped into railway