Chatteris (/ˈtʃætərɪs/ ⓘ) is a market town and civil parish in the Fenland district of Cambridgeshire, England, situated in the Fens between Huntingdon, March and Ely.

The parish of Chatteris is large, covering 6,099 hectares, and for much of its history was a raised island in the low-lying wetland of the Fens.

[1] After several fires in the 18th and 19th centuries, the majority of the town's housing dates from the late Victorian period onwards, with the tower of the parish church the only medieval building remaining.

The name is first attested in a charter of 974 (in a fourteenth-century copy), as Cæateric and in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Catriz, Cietriz, Cetriz and Cateriz.

[6] Saxon evidence is less well preserved, although in 679, Hunna, the chaplain to Æthelthryth of Ely built a hermitage on Honey Hill.

[1] The miraculous story of the first known parishioner of the town, Bricstan, is documented in the Historia Ecclesiastica by the Chronicler Orderic Vitalis (1075 – c.1142).

[8] According to the legend, Bricstan was a pious free tenant from the town who had joined the monastery at Ely Cathedral in 1115 to begin training as a monk.

The legend recounts that one night he had a vision of Saint Etheldreda coming towards him, and as if by a miracle, his heavy chains fell from him and he was shackled no longer.

[9] The wife of Henry I, Matilda of Scotland, heard of the miracle, and she assured herself that he was no rogue or thief, issued a writ of pardon and declared him a free man.

As a result, the abbey survived the first wave of closures during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but was surrendered to the king's commissioners in 1538, by which time there were eleven nuns in residence.

[15] Later fires in 1706 and 1864 destroyed most medieval and Georgian architecture, and a large proportion of the town's listed buildings date from the Victorian period onwards.

[16] However, many of the pasture fields on the outskirts of the town have evidence of ridge and furrow farming practices, although these are under threat by current building proposals.

Chatteris is situated between Huntingdon, St Ives, Peterborough, March and Ely, in the middle of the Fens—the lowest-lying area in the United Kingdom—with most of the land surrounding the town being below sea level, although the highest point in the Fens (36 feet above sea level) is within Chatteris's parish boundaries.

The town centre traffic was bypassed in 1986, with the disused route of the former St Ives extension of the Great Eastern Railway being used to build the A141 to March and Guyhirn.

[25] There are no Met Office recording stations in the Fens, but an indication of rainfall and temperature of the county town Cambridge on the edge of the Fens shows that rainfall is below the national average, and in a wider study of East Anglia, the region had temperatures comparable with London, the warmest part of the UK.

[31] The town is part of the North East Cambridgeshire parliamentary seat, whose Member of Parliament is currently Steve Barclay, a Conservative.

[38] Chatteris is sited in particularly fertile agricultural land, and as such, the town's local economy is largely based on this industry.

[39] Alan Bartlett and Sons Ltd, a major British grower and packer of root vegetables has a large facility in the town with over 2,500 hectares under cultivation, much of it growing parsnips and the Chantenay and Bushytops carrot.

[42] The company was established in the town in the late 19th century and over the years has manufactured diamond mining equipment and overhead cranes.

The company is now part of the Avingtrans Group and specialises in creating engineered products for the oil, gas, nuclear and medical industries.

[45][46] Another supermarket constructed on the A141 Fenland Way became the first of Tesco's discount Jack's-branded stores in the UK and hosted the press launch on 19 September 2018, opening to the public the following day.

Chatteris was well served by local bus routes, with regular buses to the nearby towns of March, St Ives, Ely and the city of Cambridge.

[56] The parish of Chatteris is large, covering 6,099 hectares, equalling an average population density of 1.45, although most of the dwellings are concentrated in a smaller area, the outskirts of the town consisting of farmland.

[80] News of the song made the headlines of the Cambridgeshire Times and the Peterborough Evening Telegraph during September 2005, a month before the album's official release.

[87] It is home of the Chatteris Kingfishers swimming club, who after successes in 2008 compete in Division One of the 2009 "Cambs Cup" competition.

Proposals for the development of Cromwell Community College under the government's BSF programme include significant leisure provisions and these are expected to start in 2010.

[93][94] The town is noted for its annual display of Christmas lights, which are entirely funded by community donations and have been featured on BBC Look East.

[97][98] The town has a museum https://www.chatterismuseum.org.uk/ run by volunteers, with several permanent exhibitions about local history, the Fens, Victoriana and the railways.

[103] Since 2012 Chatteris has a branch of the University of the Third Age (U3A) which caters for people no longer in full time employment, with a talk every month at the general meeting held at the King Edward Centre, plus over 20 interest groups of various kinds, and a number of trips and theatre visits are also provided during the year.

[105] Chatteris achieved the highest gold award in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 and in 2023 was joint winner of Anglia in Bloom with Huntingdon.