North of the dual carriageway are a few houses and a pub, with a footbridge linking to the southern part of the village, where a large pond is encircled by cottages and the parish church, dedicated to St. Laurence.

[7] Due to the proximity of Falmer to the city of Brighton and Hove, the parish has been substantially affected by the twentieth-century development of its large neighbour.

In the slanting light of late afternoon prehistoric and medieval lynchets show up on the slopes of High Park, St Mary's Farm and Green Broom.

The chalk grasslands that the National Trust describe as Europe's tropical rainforests, and which are known to support up-to 40 species of flowering plants in one square metre,[9] have largely been destroyed since the second world war by the modern agricultural methods.

It is one of the largest medieval barns in Sussex and was used by the monks of Lewes Priory, who owned the manor, for threshing and storing corn.

The Newmarket Plantation (TQ 367 080) lies on the eastern edge of Loose Bottom and the parish and west of the South Downs Way.

There are mown paths circle its interior since the storms of 1987 and is a place of big upturned rootplates, which is home to many wren and robin.

Now a good place for birdlife, such as yellowhammer, it was the start of the route of the biggest of the mass trespasses that marked the Sussex campaign for the right to roam in 1998–9.

[3] It was sufficiently important at Domesday to have two slaves, a manorial church, swine pastures in the Weald at Horsted Keynes and Birchgrove, and brookland meadow south of Lewes still called ‘Bormer Brook’.

Big blackthorn hedges mark the bounds of the medieval open fields of the hamlet, which drop away southwards from the farmstead (TQ 357 096).

It is flowery meadow with orange tip butterflies in the small woodland glades in the spring and a swathe of devil's bit scabious in late summer.

The bank is shadowy until midday when it becomes alive with insects and butterflies, including brimstone, brown argus, marbled white, small and common blue and clouded yellow.

The south facing slope is intensively farmed, although in the field there is the song of skylarks and along the path hedges there are nesting yellowhammer.

There is little scrub, except at its eastern end, and a lot of colour including cowslips, orchids, harebell, yellow rattle, devil's bit, wild carrot and picnicker's thistle.

The northerly aspect brings Neckera crispa moss and the scarce scree Snail, Abida secale, in places.

Before it was ploughed out, one could make out a banked roadway, a strange enclosure that has been called their circus or moot, and many pits and platforms that used to be found in their field scape,[15] The cemetery yielded up more than twenty funerary urns when it was excavated in 1849.

Still now, when one looks down from the Balmer Huff into Buckland Hole one sees a whole valley filled with a pattern of rectangular banks, often topped with gorse or thorn.

The lineaments are signs of a farmed landscape from two thousand years ago and more and are comparable to the tiny fields in the west of Cornwall or Ireland.

To the south was the sarsen stone that gave it its name (TQ 361 110) It is now a lonely place of Roe Deer, Hare and Kestrel.

Due west of Four Lord's Burgh lies a triangle of wood pasture (TQ 362 117) with the pleasing character of a park, now grazed by Sussex cattle.

In August it is rich downland meadow flowers including harebells, rockrose, red clover, eggs and bacon, and scabious.

The whole of Stanmer Down (TQ 34 11) used to be covered with prehistoric field systems, and on the top of Bow Hill there may have been as many as nine barrows in two clusters.

[10] The steep slopes of the bridlepath (TQ 342 116), west of Bow Hill, have kept the chalk grassland meadows through cattle grazing and mowing.

The very rare lion's mane fungus (Hericium erineus) has been found in at least two places as well as dog stinkhorn (Mutinus caninus), bird's nest fungus (Cyathus striatus), yellow stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus), Earth stars (Geastrum triplex), lots of turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), and many others.

If one is lucky (or unlucky depending on your disposition) one might even smell the distinctive aroma of the ordinary stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus,[10] Near to Granny's Belt (TQ 334 105) there are reports that a sarsen stone circle existed till the 19th century.

There is a huge sarsen stone in the trees as well as evidence for a Roman grain storage building and pit almost 2 metres deep.

[20] East Sussex County Council is the next tier of government, for which Falmer is within the Newhaven and Ouse Valley West division, with responsibility for Education, Libraries, Social Services, Civil Registration, Trading Standards and Transport.

The Conservative Maria Caulfield, a local nurse, was elected in 2015 defeating the incumbent Liberal Democrat Norman Baker who was the constituency MP from 1997.

Lewes Priory Cricket Club play some home games in Falmer and have Sussex and Brighton universities students and staff as members.

After a lengthy process including a public enquiry, it was approved by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2005, but Lewes District Council subsequently mounted a legal challenge and overturned the decision on a technicality.