Eton College owns a 500 acre plot in the parish and in 2021 applied to build 3,000 homes in the area north of the railway line.

At Brookhouse, East Chiltington, (TQ375 155) there used to be a 2.25 m girth pollarded native Black Poplar by the former barns, on a site that has been separated for 165 years from the banks of the Bevern Stream by the railway line.

It also supports mayflies, caddis flies and great crested newts, and many birds drink from the waters, including summer visitors like nightingale.

In late 2016 the whole of the Bevern Stream was polluted by a huge volume of slurry from Plumpton College Dairy Unit.

The footprint of the lost medieval Home Wood begins at the north end of Novington Lane.

The recent re-coppicing has failed because deer have eaten out the inadequately protected regrowth and killed the old coppice stools.

There is a gentle valley stream at its centre and a derelict unimproved pasture along its north side, which a footpath crosses.

[4] Warningore wood (TQ 382 140) spans the East Chiltington and St John Without parish and is a solid hornbeam coppice par excellence.

Amongst the hornbeam is wych elm, wild service, crab apple, spindle, guelder rose and aspen.

As many as 25 ancient woodland indicator species can be found there, including early purple and butterfly orchids.

If that designation had been completed the rich herbaceous vegetation of the wide rides which included old Wealden plants like ragged robin may still be present.

The quarry was opened in 1949 and continued into the 1960s before stopping and briefly resuming in the 1990s before the lakes became lower than the water table.

Unfortunately, they are currently licensed to a private owner who has left them unmanaged and abandoned with threatening keep out notices, despite sitting in the South Downs National Park.

The pools have nice vegetation and pond snails, and the air is buzzing with mayflies, dragonflies and damselflies in summer.

However, at least the western pool is heavily invaded with Australian swamp stonecrop and they are in need of urgent management to prevent the spread of invasive species through the local watercourses.

The site is of biological importance due to its rare chalk grassland habitat along with its woodland and scrub.

In 1993 Ashcombe Bottom (TQ 373 118) was bought by the National Trust with Blackcap, Mount Harry, Win Green and most of the scarp.

It is rich in scrubland species and has oak, ash, silver birch, hazel, bryony, rosebay willowherb, spindle, honeysuckle and occasional wood sage.

The church has one of the largest yew trees in Sussex and maintains its wild flower meadows proudly.

It declares on entry to look out for its sweet violet, cuckoo flower, bluebell, lords-and-ladies, birdsfoot trefoil, adder's tongue, knapweed, common spotted and green-winged orchid, cat's ear, agrimony, yarrow, lesser stitchwort, vervain and rough hawkbit as well as its perennial grasses which include yorkshire fog, meadow foxtail and cocksfoot.

The ward also includes Chailey, Ditchling, St John Without, Newick, Plumpton, Streat, Westmeston and Wivelsfield.

The Conservative Maria Caulfield, a local nurse, has been serving as the constituency MP since 2015 when she defeated the incumbent Liberal Democrat Norman Baker.

Prior to Brexit in 2020, the village was part of the South East England constituency in the European Parliament.