Churchdown, Gloucestershire
Historical Description
Churchdown, a village and a parish in Gloucestershire. The village stands near Ermine Street, under the Cotswolds, 4 miles E of Gloucester. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Gloucester, a station on the M.R. and G.W.R., and a police station. The parish includes also part of the hamlet of Hucclecote. Acreage, 2692; population of the civil parish, 750; of the ecclesiastical, 805. Church-down Hill, an outlier of the Cotswolds, is 580 feet high, and has quarries and the remains of an earthwork on the summit, The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol; gross value, £300. Patron, the Dean and Chapter of Bristol. The church is situated on the summit of the hill, and contains Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Transition, and Perpendicular work. It was restored in 1884. There is a Wesleyan chapel.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Gloucestershire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Churchdown St. Bartholomew | |
| Hundred | Dudstone and Kings Barton | |
| Poor Law union | Gloucester |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1563.
The Gloucestershire Parish Registers are available online at Ancestry, in association with Gloucestershire Archives.
Churches
Church of England
St. Andrew, the Vale
The church of St. Andrew, in the Vale, built in 1903-4, at a cost of about £3,400, is an edifice in the Early English style, from designs by Mr. W. B. Wood, architect, dedicated 25 April, 1904, and will seat 336 persons.
St. Batholomew (parish church)
The church of St. Bartholomew, standing on the summit of a detached hill, is an edifice of stone in the Norman and Late Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, nave of three bays, south aisle, north porch with parvise and an embattled western tower with pinnacles containing 5 bells: the following inscription remains on the inside wall of the tower "This belhows was byyldede in the yeer of our Lode God 1601:" in the chancel wall is a piscina of Early English date: the font consists of a deep octagonal panelled basin, relieved by crocketed niches in each panel, and supported on a concave panelled shaft, with a wide flat base of the same shape: in the south aisle is a memorial to John Danvers, ob, 1616: there is also a monument with arms to Sir Robert Austen bart. of Hall Place, Dartford, Kent, and M.P. for New Romney, d. 1743: some of the pews are elaborately carved: the church was restored in 1884 at a cost of £300, the chancel having been restored three years previously by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and in 1892 a vestry was added at a cost of £50: there are about 200 sittings.
Methodist
Primitive Methodist Chapel
The Primitive Methodist chapel was built in 1877, and will hold 80 persons.
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Churchdown from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Churchdown (St. Bartholomew))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Gloucestershire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Churchdown are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers covering Gloucestershire online:
- Gloucester Citizen
- Gloucester Journal
- Gloucestershire Chronicle
- Gloucestershire Echo
- Cheltenham Chronicle
- Cheltenham Looker-On
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of the county of Gloucester, 1623 is available on the Heraldry page.