Ringmer is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is located east of Lewes. Other small settlements in the parish include Upper Wellingham, Ashton Green, Broyle Side, Little Norlington and Shortgate. Ringmer is one of the largest villages in the south of England. There has been human habitation since at least Roman times. The village church, dedicated to St Mary, was probably built in the 13th century. One of its rectors, named to the living in 1533, was William Levett, named in the same year as rector of Buxted, and one of the most improbable figures in English ecclesiastical history. Ringmer has two schools, Ringmer Primary School for ages 4–11 and King's Academy for students aged 11–18. Ringmer Community College houses the localswimming pool which is run by Wave Leisure. The symbol of Ringmer is a tortoise named Timothy, after the female tortoise that the naturalist Gilbert White carried back to Selborne in Hampshire in 1780. White’s aunt Rebecca Snooke lived in Delves House where Timothy had the run of the courtyard garden. Timothy died in 1794, a year after Gilbert White.
Governance
Ringmer is part of the electoral ward called Ouse Valley and Ringmer. the population of this ward at the 2011 census was 6,422.
Landmarks
Ringmer Mill stood for centuries on Mill Plain overlooking Ringmer. This post mill was in operation until 1921 but collapsed in 1925 leaving the mill post, on which the body of the mill rotated, remaining as a local landmark. Plashett Park Wood is a Site of Special Scientific Interest partly in the parish. It is a site of biological importance as an area of ancient woodland. Plashett Wood and the adjoining Plashett Park Farm provide habitats for a wide variety of breeding birds and bats, plus a number of rarer invertebrates and flora.
Sport and leisure
Ringmer has a Non-League football club, AFC Ringmer, which played at The Caburn ground until 2020; from season 2020/21 games are played at a new ground behind King's Academy.
Gideon Mantell, pioneer geologist & palaeontologist, was a Lewes surgeon who held contracts to serve the poor of Ringmer and the Royal Horse Artillery hospital at Ringmer barracks
William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, married Gulielma Springett, a member of the Springett family of Broyle Place, Ringmer.
2006 fireworks factory fire
On 3 December 2006 the Festival Fireworks factory, which is located in the parish near Shortgate, caught fire detonating the display pyrotechnics stored on the site. Successive explosions then followed for more than eight hours. Sussex Police, which described it as "a serious incident", established a exclusion zone around the factory. Television pictures showed a large fireball at the centre of the blaze. Two members of Sussex fire services died and nine fire service workers were injured along with two members of the public and a police officer. Hundreds of rockets continued to explode more than five hours after the initial blasts.
