Chettisham is a hamlet in

East Cambridgeshire East Cambridgeshire (locally known as East Cambs) is a local government district in Cambridgeshire, England. Its council is based in the cathedral city of Ely. The district also contains the towns of Littleport and Soham and surrounding rural a ...

between Ely and

Littleport Littleport is a town in East Cambridgeshire, in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about north-east of Ely and south-east of Welney, on the Bedford Level South section of the River Great Ouse, close to Burnt Fen and Mare Fe ...

. The main claim to fame is St. Michael church. There are some pictures and a description of the church at the Cambridgeshire Churches website.

Etymology

The name ''Chettisham'' is first attested around 1170, as ''Chetesham''. The first element is thought to derive from the

Common Brittonic Common Brittonic (; ; ), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages. It is a form of Insular Cel ...

word that survives in modern Welsh as ("wood"). This became a place-name in its own right. Adopted into

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

, that place-name (itself now lost) was then included (in the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

) in the name of a neighbouring settlement though the addition of the Old English word ("home, estate, farm"). Thus the name once meant "farm at the place called ''Chet''"..

References

External links

Hamlets in Cambridgeshire East Cambridgeshire District Cambridgeshire places with etymologically Brittonic names {{Cambridgeshire-geo-stub