Marstons Mills is one of the more rural of the Barnstable villages. Early settlers here were farmers, craftsman, and millers who were attracted to better soils found in the village.
The Marstons family for whom the village is named were owners of one of the mills located along what is known today as the Marstons Mills River. You can pass by the site of a fulling mill (which cleaned wool) in the late 1600s and later a grist mill that operated into the early 1900s.
The William Marstons house sits on a rise overlooking Mill Pond, a tribute to the profitability of milling. Most of the other historic houses remaining today are farmhouses scattered throughout the village, modest in scale with simple clean lines and elegantly proportioned roofs, windows and doors.
The center of the village has retained its traditional uses – a store has existed on the site of the Cash market for more than one hundred years. Three community buildings, the library, Liberty Hall and the Methodist church, form a little community center off the main commercial center of the village, but many of the buildings in the village center have been rebuilt and the remaining historic structures within the village center are scattered.
Burgess Park is a popular park for a wide variety of activities including disc golf. Near one of the town’s two golf courses, Olde Barnstable, is Cape Cod Airfield, which dates back to the 1920s.
