The Village – That was brought out of its Shell

The East Sussex village of Ringmer has an interesting historical association with several renowned figures.
But the 5th century BC Greek storyteller Aesop isn’t among them. But you could swear that at least one of his Fables was written there.
Occasionally, very occasionally in the month of March, if you’re quietly swishing through the beautiful lanes around the village on a bicycle, you can come around a corner and see a big eared hare, happily carrying out his famed shadow boxing routine on the verge of the road.
Pedal out of the village and you see, high up on the Ringmer sign post, a tortoise. Not just any old tortoise. But the very old tortoise, Timothy.
Timothy is not the tortoise of the fable, and the mad March hare isn’t a participant either. But Timothy has a greater claim to fame in many ways. His shell, (in fact Timothy turned out to be a her,) now sits in the Natural History Museum in London. She breathed her last in 1794, some 54 years after coming to Ringmer and perhaps with another ten years added on before arriving in this Sussex
village. Timothy was bought for just half a crown from a sailor by a Rebecca Snooke, whose nephew was a prominent naturalist.
Gilbert White went on to form a strong association with Timothy, and after Mrs Snooke died, looked after him until he expired.
So great was Timothy’s fame that she was then incorporated into the Village symbol and she therefore proudly looks down from her perch on all who enter the community.
Timothy wasn’t the only creature to make an impression on Ringmer. William Penn who named the American state of Pennsylvania, was a leading Quaker in Britain and often visited Lewes, which was a hotbed of Puritanism in the 17th century. Hobnobbing with the local gentry, Penn went on to marry Gulielma Springett, the daughter of
Sir William Springett of Broyle Place in Ringmer. Penn was a visionary and innovator, finding himself banged up in the Tower of London at one point because of his outspoken beliefs.
Not so, John Harvard. Becoming one of America’s leading educators and founding arguably the number one US university, Harvard courted and in 1636, won the hand of the vicar’s daughter, Ringmer Belle Anne Sadler. They were married in South Malling Church, still extant, which sits under a niche in the Downs below Ringmer. Ringmer is quite a large village, spread out along a busy road, it has an expansive village green, mostly taken up by the village cricket pitch, and offering proximity to several very attractive pubs.
Ringmer is a village with history. The Romans had a settlement there and there’s every indication they weren’t the first, following camp sites going back to the ancient days of England. The clay soil in this part of the world lends itself to pottery and a brick making factory existed there for almost 200 years.
St Mary’s Church is 13th century, an historic mill was operated until it fell down in 1925, and the surrounding woodland is ancient, part of an area naturally preserved over thousands of years of time.
The cricket pitch has seen its share of modern turmoil. Villagers woke up one morning in 2018 to more than 20 caravans across the central green.
Efforts to move the Travellers on were prolonged, much to the chagrin of the locals. But it wasn’t so much their presence that upset residents, more that they had violated the ground sacred to every red blooded Englishman, the cricket square.
Cricket has special significance in Ringmer because its neighbour Lord Gage was generally credited with inventing cricket in Sussex by arranging a match between his team and a side representing the Duke of Richmond. The game was played at the Dripping Pan in Lewes in 1728.
Lewes was spectator to the first peasants’ revolt in 1381, when the invading serfs broke into the castle, got drunk and moved on swiftly.
Ringmer was party to the last one, the rebellion of 1830. Workers on farms located on an adjacent estate owned by Lord Gage (after whom the greengage plum was named) were very unhappy that he had hired a domineering estate steward, failed to raise their wages and had been generally slow in moving with the times as far as workers benefits were concerned. But Lord Gage was a reformer and was broadly credited with calming food riots in which three men were hanged for rick burning. The Napoleonic Wars and a bad harvest had created bread shortages and the introduction of harvesting machines threatened the income of farm workers. Lord Gage negotiated a peace that kept the local farmworkers from joining the general riots.
Ringmer folk don’t forget their local heroes easily and the village is dotted with roads named after its famous sons and daughters.
Springett Avenue, Harvard Road and Sadler’s Way all reflect past notables who either were associated with the village or had lived in it.
One road name is still missing. Callaghan Close. ‘Sunny’ Jim Callaghan was British Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979.
He and wife Audrey bought Upper Clayhill Farm in 1967 and moved there permanently after he lost the 1979 general election. He remained a resident until his death in March 2005.
Ringmer and the surrounding area have defied the march of modern expansionism. The village
sits right in the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside imaginable.
That’s why Timothy the tortoise lasted so long and why the March hare is still asleep under a hedgerow, as Tim purposefully crawls past him, aiming for glory.