About This Town
Chatteris is a friendly market town situated between Huntingdon, St. Ives, Peterborough, March and Ely, in the middle of The Fens. This is 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 peaty land surrounding the town is largely used for agriculture, drained by numerous ditches and dykes, and there are two large drainage rivers near the town - the Forty Foot Drain, also known as Vermuyden's Drain, and the Sixteen Foot Drain.
Mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, the town has evidence of continuous settlement from the Neolithic period and is locally reputed to have been the last refuge of Boudica as she fled from the Romans. 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. Following the draining of the Fens, beginning in the 17th century and completed in the 19th century, the town has become a centre of agriculture and related industry.
In Depth History of Chatteris