CHURCHDOWN, a parish in the upper division of the hundred of DUDSTONE-and-KING'S-BARTON, county of GLOUCESTER, 3 miles (E. by N.) from Gloucester, containing, with the hamlet of Hucklecot, 954 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Gloucester, endowed with £400 private benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £400 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of Bristol. The church is dedicated to St. Bartholomew. The village is singularly situated on the top of an oval eminence, nearly four miles in circuit at the base, and rising from the vale to the height of about two thousand five hundred feet.

The Gloucester and Cheltenham railway passes through the parish. There are two charity schools, for boys and girls, supported by an endowment of about £25 per annum, devised in 1734, by H. Window, Esq.; and four almshouses, for four poor widows, are endowed with about £4 per annum each. John Harmer, Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, author of a Life of Cicero, a Greek Etymological Dictionary, and other learned works, was born here; he died in 1670. His father, who died in 1613, master of Winchester school, and one of the translators of the Bible, appears to have been minister of this parish.