Stanmer Park

A fine example of an 18th-century country estate, Stanmer’s 495 hectares bear traces of 6,000 years of cultural and environmental heritage. The park is part of the South Downs National Park and from here, you can walk or cycle to the top of the Downs and join the long-distance South Downs Way. A great deal of restoration work and changes were made to the park between 2018 and 2021, so if you haven’t visited in a while, it’s worth taking a trip to see it. 

If you need an accessible route, the wide gravel Green Drive runs for 0.7 miles alongside the lime trees from the main gates of the park to Stanmer House. Across the rest of the park, paths criss-cross the woods and fields, and you can wander here for hours. If you prefer to follow a signposted trail though, there are three loops to choose from.

Woodland trail (5 miles)

This takes you through the Great Wood, High Park Wood and Millbank Wood, offering some wonderful views as you emerge from the trees. On route you pass Lot’s Pond – the only dew pond in Stanmer Park. You can also cycle this route, as it follows a bridleway close to the perimeter of the park all the way round.

2. Visit One Garden Brighton

Developed in the 18th century as a kitchen garden for Stanmer House, the area within the high knapped flint walls of One Garden Brighton has been restored to create an inspirational space to relax in. Within the historic walled garden, there’s a café as well as a food and plant market with the best of local produce.

One Garden Brighton is now run by Plumpton College and is home to the college’s horticulture campus. 

3. Connect with nature in new ways

There are so many ways to appreciate the biodiversity of The Living Coast within Stanmer Park. Go birdwatching, hunt for butterflies or bluebells. Search for grassland orchids that spring from the meadows in early summer or see how many different mushrooms you can spot in autumn. Sit on a log or lie on the grass and listen to the sounds of the woodlands and the grasslands. And if you’re keen to learn and experience something different, why not join a workshop, nature meditation or guided seasonal walk to see the surroundings through new eyes. See What’s On for ideas. 

5. Experience Stanmer through the seasons

Stanmer changes dramatically through the seasons. In spring, look out for the brilliant pink of the Judas tree in the churchyard, while in the orchards the apples blossom slightly more discreetly. In late April and early May, the best places to see bluebells are in the Great Wood and Millbank Wood. In May/June the green-and-yellow flowers of the Tulip Trees in the arboretum are wonderful, while in June and early July the meadow wildflowers at Marquee Brow bring out the bees and butterflies.

In summer, enjoy the shade of the woods and seek out the foxgloves in the hazel coppice glades in the Great Wood. In July, the parade of lime trees that flanks the estate’s main drive are in full flower.

The autumn colours in the woods and arboretum are rich and vibrant. Conkers fall from the Horse Chestnut trees, and the sweet chestnuts are ripe and ready in the Great Wood. You can smell the apples, and the ground beneath the beech hangars in Great Wood and Millbank Wood are carpeted in beechnuts, known as mast.

With many of the trees bare for the winter, the woodlands are rich with shades of brown. Holly berries blaze on the spikey bushes, and if you look closely at the cedars behind Stanmer House you can see the cones forming.

6. Cycle the park

Stanmer Park is a lovely cycle destination from Brighton and offers some challenging and fun mountain biking routes on gravel, chalk and grass. From the top of the park you can access the South Downs Way and other cycle routes up and over the Downs.

Within the park, you can loop around the perimeter following the signs for the Woodland Trail (5 miles), or for a bigger challenge, consider the Granny’s Belt route – one of The Living Coast by Bike routes – that starts and finishes at Stanmer, taking in Ditchling Beacon, the third highest point on the South Downs.

For the kids, the Green Drive is a wide gravel path that runs from the playground at the main gate up to Stanmer House. There’s a BTN Bikeshare point at the walled garden and a cycle hire at the main entrance of the park.

The Water Catcher

The Grade II listed Victorian Water Catcher is thought to be only one of two remaining in the UK. It was built in 1870-75 and provided gravity-fed rainwater to Stanmer House and the village through a complex network of underground tanks and pipes. Thanks to this large stone ‘trough’, residents of Stanmer House enjoyed some of the country’s first flushing toilets.

The Arboretum

An arboretum was started on the lower slopes of the Great Wood in the 1950s. Amongst the lofty non-native specimens gracing the slopes today are Golden Siberian Elms, Monkey Puzzle Trees, Ginkgos and Tulip Trees.

Historic trees

Planted in the 18th century by Thomas Pelham, the giant Lebanese Cedars behind Stanmer House are magnificent. In the churchyard there’s a Yew Tree with a hollow trunk. With a circumference of 6m, this is believed to be the oldest tree in Brighton, likely dating back to Saxon times and making it over 1,000 years old. The native yew tree has been held sacred since the pre-Christian era of the druids and is associated with death and resurrection.

The Stanmer Orchards

In the spring it’s lovely to wander the orchards of Stanmer, while in autumn there’s the smell of ripening fruit. The Old Orchard stretches behind the length of the walled garden, while the Home Farm Orchard near the village is managed by the Brighton Permaculture Trust, contains over 25 rare Sussex apple varieties and has been designated a National Collection by Plant Heritage. The Fruit Factory, the hub for a local scrumping project is located here, and in the Autumn you can buy fresh apple juice from the shop.

The Earthship

England’s first Earthship was built by the Low Carbon Trust at Stanmer Park and is open for tours or to hire for events. Earthship Brighton is an off-grid building that powers itself from the sun, harvests all its water from the sky and treats its wastewater onsite using plants.

Stanmer House

Built in the 1720s by the Pelham Family, The Grade I listed manor house was designed by Nicholas Dubois in the Palladian style, although has had various alterations done since then.

The Badgers Sculpture

On the grassy hill behind Stanmer House, the weathered shapes of a set of wooden badgers emerge from a fallen tree trunk. The badgers were carved by local sculptor Reece Ingram in 1991 from a Lebanese Cedar that fell in a storm in 1989. The tree was over 150 years old when it was blown down.

Stanmer Park has long been a hub for community initiatives supporting biodiversity, sustainable living and wellbeing. England’s first Earthship was built by the Low Carbon Trust in Stanmer, and you can learn about building one yourself as well as other sustainable building methods.

The park is also is home to the Brighton Permaculture Trust and Stanmer Organics, both of which promote sustainable growing and living too. They offer courses, wellbeing spaces, and fun ways to get involved in growing and biodiversity projects.

The Brighton & Hove Food Partnership has developed the Stanmer Wellbeing Gardens, a series of spaces to create further opportunities for people to learn and spend time outdoors. One Garden Brighton is also developing a programme of community events and volunteering opportunities for the local community.

There is also the Stanmer Preservation Society which has worked for many years to preserve the history and landscapes of the park.

Landscape

Stanmer Park extends up either side of a chalk valley. Its open meadows of rare chalk grassland contrast with the shady stretch of the Great Woods and other pockets of leafy woodland.
The estate was landscaped in the 18th century, as was the fashion at the time. Areas were cleared, trees planted, and paths and formal gardens laid out. Before that Stanmer had been farmed for thousands of years, the imprint of the Bronze Age field systems still evident beneath the 18th-century landscape which was designed by Humphrey Repton.

Today, stretches of Stanmer remain wild, while the meadows of Marquee Brow – the last remnant of the downland that would’ve covered the whole park – is grazed by sheep to enable the unique plant species of the downlands to thrive.

On the park’s western skyline, the unusual silhouettes of non-native trees stand out, part of an arboretum planted from the 1950s.

Nature & wildlife

The variety of woodland and grassland habitats are home to rare and common species of birds, animal, insect and plants. The wildflowers of the downlands nurture abundant butterflies and moths, including the brilliant and rare Adonis Blue. Here, you can spot the Round-headed Rampion, Sussex’s county flower, and the spotty furls of the Adder’s Tongue Fern, a plant which indicates the land was once an ancient meadow.

Badgers, foxes, rabbits and small deer roam, and in the skies you can spot kestrel and buzzards. While at night pipistrelle, serotine, long-eared and Natterer’s bats flit through the dark.

Community groups have also done a great deal to increase biodiversity in the area, creating marshy habitats and ponds.

History

Flint blades and other clues at archaeological sites in Stanmer show that it was settled by Neolithic communities more than 5,000 years ago, and there is evidence of it being farmed since the Bronze Age. Records of there being a settlement at Stanmer Village go back to Saxon times, and Stanmer is a combination of the Anglo-Saxon words stan and mere – stone and pond or stony pond. You can see the pond to this day besides the church. According to the Domesday Book, Stanmer had a population of 59 people in 1086.

Much of the landscape and historic buildings you see today came after the Pelham family bought the Stanmer Estate in 1712. Before that the land had belonged to the Church. The Pelhams built Stanmer House in 1722 and began an ambitious landscaping project once it was complete in 1727. The walled garden and many of the flint farm buildings date back to this time.

The estate was requisitioned from the Pelham’s in 1942 to accommodate the Canadian tank regiment, and the council bought Stanmer Park in 1947 for £225,000 to safeguard the city’s water supply, which flows from the Downs through a chalk aquifer beneath the park. Stanmer was opened as a public park in 1953.