It is most likely that it was one of Hugh de Port's men that held West Dummer when the Domesday Survey took place and by the 13th century the Dummer family were its tenants and remain so til 1593 when it went to the Millingate family.

Grange of Dummer was given to Waverley Abbey by Stephen and stayed there until the Suppression of 1536 and by the beginning of the 17th century it had been handed to the Dummer family and followed the descent of West Dummer. A sub tenant called Hunger held East Dummer and he was probably an ancestor of the Dummers who held the land by the 12th century. The manor was then conveyed in 1368-9 to Sir John Popham from the hamlet of Popham which adjoined it, and in the next two hundred years it changed hands many times but i 1577 was in the possession of John Millingate and thence to the Terry family until 1864.

The parish has had many confrontations with the crown and in 1788 the Prince of Wales rented Kempshott House and brought Mrs Fitzherbert here a  sequence of events is said to have unfolded and the Princes behaviour was said to have scandalised the neighbourhood and it was in 1795 that he eventually married Caroline of Brunswick and had his honeymoon at Kempshott.

The life and times of a country gentleman in a small village, can be  seen in the Diaries of Dummer, by A.M.W.Stirling who published them in 1934 and is an account of diaries by Stephen Terry who lived at Dummer House from 1774 - 1867. It refers to the village of Dunmere which means 'the lake or mere on a hill'.
 

The Queens Inn Dummer

The village as described above is a lovely place and the Old Brewery and the Old Forge show that it was once a flourishing place that had its own trades but today only modern industry is moving in, mainly catering for the tourists

views of the village street Dummer

Up Street and Down Street are the quaint names given to the main thoroughfare through the village and the local pub The Queen has probably seen a lot of people going up when they should have been going down! Not far from the pub is the village well which was constructed in 1897. The shaft has been covered over but the treadwheel which is 10ft in diameter is still a part of the village today.
 

All Saints Church

The church is dedicated to All Saints and has an ancient gallery that covers more than half the length of the nave this is mainly because the latter is tiny and the chancel arch has a canopy that is very rare in the county, the pulpit is also rare as it comes from 1380 and is one of the six oldest pulpits in the country.

The Lychgate at All Saints

There is a board called a charity board which one can see that a bequest in 1610 was made that a small house and garden was to be provided to aid the education of six boys of the village and this was the start of the Dummer School which was on the north side of Up Street and was closed in 1971.

Interior of All Saints, showing the Sovereigns Standard of the Life Guards laid up here after Queen Elizabeth II presented the regiment with a new standard

Dummer is also the home of the family of Sarah, The Duchess of York once the wife of Prince Andrew, and her father Major Ronald Ferguson.

Major Ferguson who had two children Jan and Sarah from his first marriage and three,  Andrew, Alice and Eliza from his second, loved this little village and lived here with his second wife at Dummer Down Farm, sadly Major Ferguson died at the age of 71 in 2003. He was the president of the Dummer Golf Club.