Relocated Chatteris Museum opens as part of Combined Authority market towns improvement

There were celebrations in Chatteris to mark the opening of the town’s relocated museum.

On Saturday officials were joined by museum volunteers to celebrate a project which aims to help revitalise the town centre, attracting residents and visitors, and supporting the local economy.

The officials included the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Dr Nik Johnson, and Deputy Mayor Cllr Anna Smith, joined by Mayor of Chatteris Cllr Anne Hay, and Combined Authority Business Board chair Al Kingsley.

Funding of £1.05million from the Combined Authority’s Market Towns Programme supported the Chatteris Town Council-led project to purchase and convert 2 Park Street into the museum and community room, with offices above, and to extend and convert 14 Church Lane to create three community rooms, bigger council offices and chambers and two residential flats.

The community rooms will be available to organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and the local doctors' surgery to enable them to bring more services to the town.

The museum’s National Lottery Heritage Fund grant was for part of a project looking at Chatteris 100 years ago.

‘Chatteris20s’ was a project linked to the release of the 1921 census, involving schools, community groups, and local people through dance, art, and research projects.

The museum, now located in the former Barclay’s Bank, formed part of the ambitious regeneration scheme, reflecting one of the nine key proposals for Chatteris highlighted in the Growing Fenland Chatteris Town Masterplan, also funded by the Combined Authority.

This was to ‘develop a stronger cultural offer and evening economy’ including developing a more creative use for the recently closed bank that would ‘stand of defiance against High Street decline, by positively embracing new usage for the building.

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