Canals, bells and village tables
Barton-under-Needwood
Walk beside narrowboats, hear the story of a Tudor church and choose between old inns and a farm-led newcomer.
- Best for
- Canal walks, Tudor history and independent food stops
- Give it
- A marina walk, Tudor history and an optional meal stop
- Don't miss
- St James' embattled tower and restored ring of bells
Photo: Tim Heaton · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
A village where waterways and pub stories meet
Barton-under-Needwood works best as an unhurried mix of marina paths, Tudor detail and locally rooted food.
Begin with the basin, lakes and woodland paths around Barton Marina, then turn to St James' Church, begun in 1517 by the Barton-born Dr John Taylor. The village's food stops range from the farm shop's Packington meat and local bread to historic inns and the newer Two Pigs, whose owners also run Packington Free Range.
Your picks, your pace
Make Barton-under-Needwood yours
Choose a mood or build your own list. Your saved stops are an ordering aid; mapped places can open as a direct route when you are ready.
Local signatures
3 places
Start here
St James' Church
A Grade II* Tudor church begun in 1517 by Barton-born Dr John Taylor, with embattled parapets, original low-pitched roofs and a restored ring of bells.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Barton-under-Needwood
The Butcher, Baker Farm Shop
A family-run farm shop and bakery selling Packington Farm meat, bread from local bakeries, pies, cooked meats, seasonal produce, condiments and gifts.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Barton Marina
The Two Pigs
A casual modern gastropub in the former Red Lion, serving modern pub classics and seasonal dishes with produce connected to its owners' Packington Free Range farm.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Main Street, Barton-under-Needwood
Food & drink
4 placesThe Middle Bell
A large village pub and restaurant with an upstairs function room; the oldest front section dates to the late 1700s and is Grade II listed.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Main Street, Barton-under-Needwood
The Waterfront
A pub and restaurant overlooking the marina's moored narrowboats, with a waterside patio and a menu that includes sandwiches and chips.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Barton Marina
The Three Horseshoes
A two-room village pub with a half-timbered frontage, a refurbished restaurant on one side and a cask-ale bar with a log burner on the other.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Station Road, Barton-under-Needwood
The Shoulder of Mutton
A traditional Grade II listed former coaching inn with low beams, wood panelling and an inglenook fireplace, serving owner-cooked food and offering rooms.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Main Street, Barton-under-Needwood
Walks & outdoors
1 placeBarton Marina
An easy roughly 1.5-2.1-mile circuit beside the marina basin, lakes and woodland paths, with more than 300 narrowboats forming the waterside backdrop.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Barton Marina and its lakes
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On the map
Barton-under-Needwood at a glance
Tap a marker to jump to its guide card.
Three ways to explore Barton-under-Needwood
Signature outings
Walk the Marina Loop
Follow an easy circuit around the basin, lakes and woodland paths, with narrowboats alongside much of the scene.
Meet Dr John Taylor's Church
Look up at St James' embattled parapets, then trace the church begun in 1517 by Barton-born Dr John Taylor.
Choose a Side of the Inn
At the Three Horseshoes, pair the refurbished restaurant with the separate cask-ale bar and its log burner.
The village story
Barton-under-Needwood Village Guide
Teddy-bear traditions, pub reinventions, canal paths and a Tudor founder give Barton-under-Needwood its distinctive rhythm.
Teddy Traditions and the Pub Village
The annual Barton Teddy Festival keeps the village's teddy-bear tradition alive with rides including the Barton Belle and Teddy Express, alongside arts and crafts and a scarecrow competition. Set up in the 1990s, the two-day family event is run by more than a hundred volunteers.
Barton has several pubs for a village of just over four thousand people.
Two Bells and a Trophy Cabinet
The Middle Bell on Main Street is a large village pub and restaurant with an upstairs private function room. Its oldest front section dates to the late 1700s and has been Grade II listed since 1984; Wye Valley HPA and Butty Bach are regulars on the bar, with Draught Bass, Holden's Golden Glow and Marston's Pedigree rotating through.
The Royal Oak on The Green has been run by Katy and Steve Boulter since 2006 and has an impressive trophy cabinet: local Pub of the Year three years running from 2011, and Marston's national Cask Ale Pub of the Year in 2013, 2014 and 2016. Marston's Pedigree stays put; two rotating casks, usually from Dancing Duck, Marston's or Titanic, come and go.
Old Inns and a Farm-Led Newcomer
Ron and Alex Mercer bought the old Red Lion in September 2023 and reopened it the following May as the Two Pigs. The brothers run Packington Free Range, a free-range pork, egg and chicken farm, and much of what reaches the plate traces straight back to it. The pub focuses on modern pub classics with a twist, alongside Sunday roast, weekend breakfast and monthly tasting menus; chef-patron Liam Dillon also runs The Boat in Lichfield.
The Three Horseshoes on Station Road is praised as "The Perfect Pub in Barton Under Needwood." The Shoulder of Mutton, a 17th-century former coaching inn, keeps low beams and an inglenook fireplace and lets rooms above.
From Farm Shop to Towpath
At Barton Marina, the Butcher, Baker farm shop — full name "The Butcher, The Baker, The Ice Cream Maker" — sells meat butchered from Packington Farm alongside bread from Hindleys and other local bakeries. Steven and Tracey McKendrick run the business and farm at nearby Rangemore.
More than 300 narrowboats line the basin, and an easy loop runs around the lakes and woodland paths; the towpath continues to Burton upon Trent past Branston Water Park, with possible kingfisher sightings along the canal. The village sits a mile off the A38 between Burton and Lichfield, with the 12, 12E and 812 buses stopping opposite the basin.
Dr John Taylor, Ten Bells and Bertune
St James' Church, Grade II* and begun in 1517, was built by Dr John Taylor, later Henry VIII's ambassador to France, on or near the site of the cottage where he was born, one of triplet sons to a Forest of Needwood game warden. In 2024, the church's overhaul added two bells to make a ring of ten and installed a new frame.
The Domesday survey recorded the village as Bertune, valued at six pounds in 1066 and seven pounds twenty years later, with a mill that brought in six shillings a year. An old local rhyme, the Ballad of Barton, once named four village pubs; of those four, only one still trades under its original name.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:Church of St James, Barton-under-Needwood - geograph.org.uk - 3387780.jpg — photograph by Tim Heaton; Church of St James, Barton-under-Needwood by Tim Heaton. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
- File:The Three Horseshoes, Barton-Under-Needwood - geograph.org.uk - 2164600.jpg — photograph by Geoff Pick; The Three Horseshoes, Barton-Under-Needwood by Geoff Pick. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- St James' Church — achurchnearyou.com national body or asset manager
- Barton Marina — nationalforest.org other published source
- The Butcher, Baker Farm Shop — butcherbakerfarmshop.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Middle Bell — themiddlebellbarton.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Two Pigs — thetwopigs.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Waterfront — waterfrontbarton.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Three Horseshoes — the3horseshoesbarton.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Shoulder of Mutton — shoulderofmuttonbarton.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation