Churchdown
| Churchdown Parish | |||
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| Coordinates | 51 ° 53 ′ N , 2 ° 10 ′ W | ||
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| Residents | 11,000 | ||
| surface | 16.5 km² (6.37 mi² ) | ||
| Population density: | 667 inhabitants per km² | ||
| administration | |||
| Post town | Cloucester | ||
| ZIP code section | GL3 | ||
| prefix | 01452 | ||
| Part of the country | England | ||
| region | South West England | ||
| Shire county | Gloucestershire | ||
| District | Tewkesbury | ||
| Website: http://www.churchdown-pc.gov.uk/ | |||
Churchdown is a village in Gloucestershire , England and is located between the cities of Gloucester and Cheltenham in the so-called green belt of these cities, in the south of Tewkesbury Borough , directly on the western slope of Churchdown Hills . It is unusual that the village has two centers. The older one (Brookfield or "village" center) on Church Road not far from St. Andrew's Church and the more modern center on St John's Avenue near St John's Church. Churchdown is referred to as “village” in England, a somewhat misleading term in German, as the village with around 11,000 inhabitants is relatively large, in fact the size of a small German town. The area of the village, or more precisely the so-called "Parishes" (literally translated parish or parish) has a circumference of around 16.5 km² (4,076 acres ), (although it should be noted that it is, as is common in England , is not a regular municipality with clear formal municipal boundaries - this function is performed by the superordinate borough). The population density is therefore 666 inhabitants / km².
geography
The area of the Parishes has a north-south extension of around 4.5 kilometers, from west to east it measures five kilometers. Churchdown borders from the north in a clockwise direction on the following localities or "Parishes" ː In the north and northwest on Innsworth with Down Hatherley , in the east on the sparsely populated Badgeworth , in the south on Brockworth and in the southwest on Hucclecote .
The area is mostly flat to wavy and is around 30 meters above sea level, only in the south rises Chosen Hill, a mountain range up to 155 meters high. Around a quarter of the area is taken up by building plots. They practically form a closed and coherent settlement three kilometers long and one kilometer wide in the middle. To the west, south and east of this are agricultural areas, in the north-west the development merges seamlessly into that of the village of Innsworth. Staverton Airport accounts for a not insignificant proportion (around 80 hectares) and the golf course in the far north also takes up a not inconsiderable proportion with 90 hectares in the Churchdowner area alone (the golf course extends north to the area of neighboring Parishes) . Viewed as a whole, closed forests with around 25 hectares are only of minor importance at first glance. However, since these are almost without exception on Chosen Hill, they are characteristic of the landscape there due to this concentration in the area, as the forests on the hill, which are on the territory of the neighboring community, are directly adjacent. But the rest of the area doesn't give the impression of an agricultural desert either. The brook Hatherly Brook is accompanied almost continuously, especially in the area of the airfield and golf course, by a gallery forest that is ten by more than 50 meters wide . And where there are no trees, lush blackberry hedges grow. The hiker who moves on the circular hiking trail in the course of this almost has the impression of walking through an extensive forest area, at least an unspoilt natural area.
The area of the central development is, although this is not quite evident on topographical maps, at least in the central and southern area somewhat higher than the agricultural areas around it. This is e.g. B. can also be seen in the fact that the crossing motorway feeder and the railroad run within the central development in a cut in the terrain, while outside of that, they tower above the surrounding land at ground level or even on a dam.
Overall, the landscape in the Churchdown area, contrary to the comparatively high population density and the low proportion of forest, has a great charm: Chosen Hill is also attractive for walkers and hikers from further afield, the extensive golf course is designed and allowed to be very natural on public hiking trails, e.g. B. be crossed by everyone in the course of the Hathorly Brooks. The same applies to the entire area in the course of the aforementioned stream south of it: the meandering watercourse is accompanied by a hiking trail both immediately west of the airfield and through the agricultural areas at Whitehouse Farm.
It is commonly believed that the border between Churchdown and Innsworth was at the Hare and Hounds pub at the junction of Parton Road and Cheltenham Road (B 4063). However, this is an incorrect assumption Innsworth actually only begins at the roundabout at which Innsworth Lane and Highgrove Way branch off. d. H. , the entire housing estate southwest of Imjin Barracks and between Innsworth Lane and Cheltenham Road is still part of Churchdown.
Larger flowing waters are the Norman's Brook which flows north of the airport into the Hatherly Brook . Both streams flow through the area from southeast to northwest and take on other small streams on their course. In the last few kilometers, the Hatherly Brook flows through the golf course and on the last section it also marks the administrative boundary of the Parishes Churchdown to the adjacent Parisch Innsworth with Down Hatherley to the north . In the upper reaches of this brook system, Norman's Brook can still be crossed over individual fords with dry feet. In the further course, at the latest in the area of the golf course, i.e. after the confluence with the Hatherly Brook, this is no longer possible.
Transport and business centers
The area is crossed by the M5 motorway in the far southwest and in the middle by the A40, a motorway slip road. A busy Gloucester - Cheltenham Spa railway line runs in between . The railway line and the A40, less the more peripheral M5, have a significant impact on Churchdown in terms of settlement and traffic technology and divide the main settlement into three parts - the iron and the motorway can only be crossed by car traffic on two bridges and channel the traffic to these bottlenecks, play no positive role even for local traffic, as there is no feeder or train station in the Churchdowns area. Within the settlement, only the motorway can also be crossed centrally on a pedestrian bridge. Outside the actual settlement, but still in the municipality, pedestrians and a few authorized persons (e.g. the farmers of the Whitehouse Farm) can pass under the railway line and feeder (e.g. via the "Brookfield Lane", similar to a dirt road) through tunnels. To the west of the village (south of the John Daniels Way) a "Public Footpath" even leads over the tracks, which are otherwise inaccessible for safety reasons and are hermetically sealed off by appropriate fencing. As with many of these public footpaths, this is a tribute to age-old rights of way that citizens and hikers can still refer to today. In addition, large parts of the streets consist of dead ends. as a result, transverse movements for individual through traffic are limited to only a few streets. The ends of the dead end a kind of close line, here you cannot get through by car, but many passages for pedestrians allow shortcuts at least for non-motorized locomotion. It is therefore no coincidence that two business centers, in a certain way even three centers, have formed in Churchdown and the motorway also forms an administrative border between the two quasi districtsː in the center north of the motorway there is a large TESCO shopping market directly on Cheltenham Road south of it on Moreley Avenue there are other smaller shops (bakery, groceries) and a post office. In the area between the motorway and the railway there is no center with retail stores, B. the Parish Council and the Churchdown Library. In the business center area south of the railway line there is a pharmacy, a grocer, a greengrocer and several restaurants.
Controversy over the green belt
According to current plans, the "Green Belt" between the cities of Gloucester and Cheltenham is to be reduced in size in favor of new development areas. This also affects Churchdown to a considerable extentː the current purely agricultural areas north of the Chosen Hills, more precisely north of the railway line and west of the village of Churchdown, are to be developed as residential areas up to the municipality's border and built on accordingly. Churchdown would "grow together" in the northern area, similar to the once independent Hucclecote and Gloucester, and in the medium term it would change the character of a suburb in the countryside to any residential area in the city. As with Hucclecote, the loss of administrative independence, i.e. incorporation, would be a not absurd follow-up step in the future.
Gloucestershire Airport
Gloucestershire Airport , also known by its original name Staverton Airport , originally a purely military airport , is located in the area of the Parishes . The eponymous village of Staverton is north of the airfield and does not belong to Churchdown. Gloucestershire Airfield with runways and operations buildings takes up almost the entire area east of Hatherly Brook and north of the A40 motorway slip road. Already in 1931 an airfield was opened nearby, which was named after the village of Down Hatherley. The name change in Staverton took place after the move to the current location. The airfield served as a training base for pilots during World War II and was known as RAF Staverton . Due to its proximity to Cheltenham, it was also used extensively by the US Army.
After the war, today's Smiths Group used the airport as a test site for various aircraft. At the same time, the airport offered scheduled flights to the Channel Islands , Dublin and the Isle of Man . In the 1960s, the Skyfame Museum for WWII aircraft opened. In the 1990s, both Police Aviation Services and Bond Air Services stationed helicopters and their headquarters in Staverton. In 1993 the name was changed to Gloucestershire Airport to "... reflect its growing importance as the county business aviation hub".
In 2009 Gloucestershire Airport received planning permission to include the extension and extension of a runway. The plans were controversial and proved controversial between the local community and the authorities. In March 2015, Gloucestershire Airport announced that it would offer more flights, more hangars and more profits in the coming years as part of a new vision for the transportation hub. The business plan calls for £ 6 million to be invested in the airport between 2015 and 2025. In 2016, the airport recorded 12,365 aircraft movements and 83,329 passengers.
administration
Churchdown is not a commune or a community as we know it from Germany, but as a form of the lowest administrative level it is a civil parish of its own. The usual tasks of the community, i.e. the lowest administrative level (e.g. coordination of waste disposal, schools, elections, etc.) are performed by the Tewkesbury Borough. Nevertheless, it is the case that in the borough's parliament there are "MPs", the so-called "councillors" from the localities, from voting districts of equal size, the so-called Council Wards. Churchdown is divided into two of these Council Wards Council Churchdown St. John's and Churchdown Brookfield (also known locally as Churchdown Village ). The boundary between these two sub-areas or 'districts', if you will, was chosen very pragmatically in the course of the crossing of the A40 Golden Valley Bypass Road, a motorway-like expressway. Churchdown's external borders, or Council Wards, are partly historical and follow e.g. T. streams, z. B. the brook Hathorly Brook in the north against Innsworth or over the ridge of the Chosen Hills in the south against Hucclecote , in the southwest the border against Innsworth again runs for almost a kilometer in the course of the crossing railway line.
Churchdown Brookfield currently has 3,399 eligible voters and Churchdown St. John's 5,257. According to this, a distribution of the total population in a ratio of 1: 1.5 can be assumed. In terms of area, the opposite is true: the more rural area south of the A40 is around 1.5 times as large as the part north of the motorway slip road. Both parts together form the Parish of Churchdown with its own Parish Council , i.e. an administrative authority. However, the tasks are much more limited than the tasks of a municipality in Germany, since the most important administrative tasks are carried out in the superordinate borough, very similar to that of a joint municipality in Germany. The parish usually has the task of maintaining or creating new green spaces, sports fields, hiking trails, etc. Churchdown's Parish Council currently coordinates six parks, including playgrounds, soccer and cricket fields, and a pavilion.
Besides the two large towns of Brookfield / St. Andrew’s and St John’s, there are only very small settlements in the area of the Parishes, the total number of which is negligible. Away from the main settlement are scattered isolated farms and very small settlements with less than a "handful of houses". On the summit plateau of the Chosen Hills is about 50 meters east of the summit z. B. Chosen Hill Cottage , which is inhabited by an elderly lady. In the west of the mentioned mountain there are some houses, the so-called Oystershell Cottages (Buscombe Noake) up to a height of 95 meters above sea level. NN; one of these cottages used to be a "tea garden" and a popular meeting place for the residents of Churchdown and Hucclecote. Administratively, all these farmsteads and small settlements belong to one of the two districts mentioned, mostly to the more southern and more rural Churchdown Brookfield.
education
Churchdown has six schools, including two secondary schools - the Churchdown School Academy and the Chosen Hill School . There are also some primary schools ; the Churchdown Parton Manor Infant and Junior Schools, St. Mary's Catholic School, and the Churchdown Village Infant and Junior Schools.
Churches
Churchdown has three Churches of England : St John's, St Andrew's and St Bartholomew's. There is also a Roman Catholic Church , the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour on Cheltenham Road East and the Churchdown Methodist Church on Chapel Hay Lane. St Bartholomew's is on top of Churchdown Hill.
Sports
Brickhampton Court Golf Complex
In the north of the parishes, immediately north of the airport and east of the ARRC headquarters , is the Brickhampton Court Golf Complex, which covers a total of 200 acrs (around 81 hectares), of which only around two thirds are in the area of the Parishes Churchdown . The golf course was created in 1994 by Creed Golf & Leisure Ltd, an organization owned by the local family. In earlier times there was also a golf course directly at Churchdown village, on the western slope of Churchdown Hills and above the railway line. The former Churchdown Golf Club, initially also called Chosen Hill Golf Club, was founded in 1900 and comprised around 90 acres and nine holes. The place existed until the outbreak of the First World War. The clubhouse was on Pirton Lane, near Sugarloaf Bridge. Today this area is taken up by grassland and building plots.
References and comments
- ↑ "(...) It is a common mis conception that Churchdown ends by the Hare and Hounds, but in fact the parish continues down to the first roundabout before Innsworth (...) Information of the Parish Council
- ↑ Churchdown Parish Council website
- ^ Data and analysis - UK Civil Aviation Authority .
- ^ Gloucestershire County Council - Community information for Churchdown ( Memento of May 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) including list of schools
- ↑ Brickhampton Court Golf Complex website
- ^ Churchdown Golf Club, Gloucestershire.