Ardingly

The South of England Show is a county show held annually at its own showground in Ardingly, Sussex during June.The show was founded in 1967 and is organised by the South of England Agricultural Society, which is patronised by Queen Elizabeth II. The show attracts up to about 80,000 visitors every year.

St Peter's Church is the Church of England parish church of the parish of Ardingly in Mid Sussex, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. The present building dates from the 14th century and was restored during the Victorian era, but Christian worship on the site has a much longer history. The stone-built, Decorated Gothic-style church, west of the village centre, has been designated a Grade I Listed building.

The Chapel of S. Saviour is the chapel to Ardingly College in West Sussex, England, and is considered an example of Gothic Revival architecture. The chapel was designed by R.H Carpenter and William Slater. The foundation stone of the college chapel was laid in 1864 and finished in 1892 The chapel was dedicated to St Saviour, and built predominantly of brick. It is a Grade II listed building. The current provost is The Rt Revd Jonathan Meyrick.

Ardingly College () is a fee-charging boarding and day school in the English public school tradition located near Ardingly, West Sussex, England. The school is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and of the Woodard Corporation of independent schools and as such has a strong Anglo-Catholic tradition. It was originally a boarding school for boys, and became fully co-educational in 1982. For the academic year 2015/16, Ardingly charged day pupils up to £7,710 per term, making it the 29th most expensive Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) day school. It is a public school in the British sense of the term (i.e. fee-paying). As of 2017, there are about 416 pupils enrolled at the school, aged between 13 and 18. Additionally, there are about 520 pupils aged from 2½ to 13 at the Ardingly College Preparatory school, with which it shares some grounds.The school is regularly positioned amongst the top ten International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in the United Kingdom, and has won the Royal Society of Chemistry Top of the Bench Competition, at the time captained by Thomas Hindle.Ardingly played an important role in providing infantry throughout the 20th century conflicts, with around 1,200 Ardingly pupils going on to fight in the First World War, 146 of whom were killed, along with two former members of staff. In addition, 88 Old Ardinians died in World War II; their names being recorded in a book of remembrance.The school's former pupils – or "Old Ardinians" – include four Conservative MPs; satirist Ian Hislop; actor Terry-Thomas; Formula One World Champion Mike Hawthorn; author Neil Gaiman; Interscan inventor John Paul Wild; and Allard Motor Company founder Sydney Allard.

Ardingly was a railway station which served the West Sussex village of Ardingly in England. It was opened on 3 September 1883 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) closed eighty years later and is currently used as an aggregates depot. The Bluebell Railway owns the trackbed from just east of the station to Horsted Keynes and has long-term plans to rebuild the line.

All Saints Church is an Anglican church in the hamlet of Highbrook in Mid Sussex, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. The tiny settlement, in the parish of West Hoathly, was distant from the parish church in that village; two wealthy sisters accordingly funded the construction of a new church to serve the local population. Richard H. Carpenter and Benjamin Ingelow's stone building, with a prominent spire, opened in 1884 and was allocated its own parish. The "handsome" church, designed in the 14th/15th-century style of the Gothic Revival, has been listed at Grade II by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance.

Wakehurst, previously known as Wakehurst Place, is a house and botanic gardens in West Sussex, England, owned by the National Trust but used and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is near Ardingly, West Sussex in the High Weald (grid reference TQ340315), and comprises a late 16th-century mansion, a mainly 20th-century garden and, in a modern building, Kew's Millennium Seed Bank. Visitors are able to see the gardens, the Mansion, and also visit the seed bank. The garden today covers some 2 km2 (490 acres) and includes walled and water gardens, woodland and wetland conservation areas. RBG Kew has leased the land from the National Trust since 1965 and much has been achieved in this time, from the Millennium Seed Bank project and the creation of the Loder Valley and Francis Rose Nature Reserves to the introduction of the visitor centre, the Seed café and Stables restaurant along with the development of the gardens. Wakehurst is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for England, and its gardens are listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.The stables are listed Grade II* and the South Lodge and gateway is listed Grade II.

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After being awarded a Millennium Commission grant in 1995, the project commenced in 1996, and is now housed in the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building situated in the grounds of Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. Its purpose is to provide an "insurance policy" against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use. The storage facilities consist of large underground frozen vaults preserving the world's largest wild-plant seedbank or collection of seeds from wild species. The project had been started by Dr Peter Thompson and run by Paul Smith after the departure of Roger Smith. Roger Smith was awarded the OBE in 2000 in the Queen's New Year Honours for services to the Project.In collaboration with other biodiversity projects around the world, expeditions are sent to collect seeds from dryland plants. Where possible, collections are kept in the country of origin with duplicates being sent to the Millennium Seed Bank Project for storage. Major partnerships exist on all the continents, enabling the countries involved to meet international objectives such as the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations Environment Programme. The seed bank at Kew has gone through many iterations. The Kew Seed Bank facility, set up by Peter Thompson in 1980, preceded the MSBP and was headed by Roger Smith from 1980 to 2005. From 2005, Paul Smith took over as head of the MSBP. The Wellcome Trust Millennium Seed Bank building was designed by the firm Stanton Williams and opened by Prince Charles in 2000. The laboratories and offices are in two wings flanking a wide space open to visitors housing an exhibition, and also allowing them to watch the work of cleaning and preparing seeds for storage through the large windows of the work areas. There is also a view down to the entrance to the underground vaults where the seeds are stored at −20 °C (−4 °F). In 2001, the international programme of the MSBP was launched. In April 2007, it banked its billionth seed, the Oxytenanthera abyssinica, a type of African bamboo. In October 2009, it reached its 10% goal of banking all the world's wild plant species by adding Musa itinerans, a wild banana, to its seed vault. As estimates for the number of seed bearing plant species have increased, 34,088 wild plant species and 1,980,405,036 seeds in storage as of June 2015 represent over 13% of the world's wild plant species.

Philpot's and Hook Quarries is a 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest south-west of Sharpthorne in West Sussex. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.These quarries expose the Ardingly Sandstone Member in the Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation, which is part of the Wealden Group, dating to the Lower Cretaceous between 140 and 100 million years ago. Philpot's Quarry has many dinosaur fossils and both quarries have debris dating to the Precambrian.The quarries are private land with no public access.

Ardingly Reservoir is west of Ardingly in West Sussex. The southern end is a 74.5-hectare (184-acre) Local Nature Reserve owned and managed by South East Water.The reservoir feeds the River Ouse located in West Sussex, England 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Haywards Heath. The villages of Ardingly and Balcombe are immediately to the east and north of the reservoir respectively. It was created in 1978 by damming Shell Brook, a tributary of the River Ouse which flows into the Ouse about 500m south of the reservoir. It is filled with water pumped from the River Ouse when river flows are high. The water is stored in the reservoir before being treated and distributed to consumers. The Ardingly Activity Centre provides watersports for the public including wind surfing, kayaking, powerboating, paddle boarding and dinghy sailing. The reservoir is also used by Ardingly Rowing Club.The west bank of the reservoir is private property of the Balcombe Estate but the north, south and east shores offer public rights of way and bridleways. Ornithologists are catered for with two bird hides situated on the east bank.

Wakehurst and Chiddingly Woods is a 155.9-hectare (385-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest south-east of Crawley in West Sussex, England. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I, and part of it is a Geological Conservation Review site.These woods have steep sided valleys formed by streams cutting through Wadhurst Clay and Tunbridge Wells sands, exposing outcrops of sandstone. The valleys have a warm, moist micro-climate, with a rich variety of ferns, mosses, liverworts and lichens. There is a diverse breeding bird community. Chiddingly Wood is geologically important because weathering of its sandstone has produced sculptured blocks and a comprehensive set of micro-weathering features.

All Saints Church, Lindfield is a Grade II* listed Church of England church in Lindfield, West Sussex, England, built in the Middle Ages in the Early English style. The church is built of Sussex and Ardingly sandstone and dates mainly from the early 14th century. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries the church fell into decline and became almost derelict. It was fully restored in the mid-19th century, largely thanks to the efforts of the curate Reverend Francis Hill Sewell, a Cambridge graduate who remained the incumbent at Lindfield until his death in 1862.