Catmere End is a small village about 13½ miles south of Cambridge. It lies at the extreme western edge of the civil parish of Littlebury, 2½ miles from Littlebury itself. As is normally case with an Essex ‘End’, or outlying hamlet, it has no church of its own but is happily only a few minutes’ walk from St Mary’s, Strethall, an Anglo-Saxon church founded in about 1010. In the 1880s this anomaly was corrected and Catmere End was transferred from the ecclesiastical parish of Littlebury to that of Strethall, while remaining in the civil parish of Littlebury. It once had a manor house, Catmere Hall, which burned down and was demolished in the 1750s: some of its timbers are supposed to have been used in the construction of Howe Hall in Littlebury Green, which is marked, curiously, as ‘Catmere Hall’ in at least one early 19th century map.
Much of the village’s farmland has been absorbed into the Audley End estate. Of Catmere Hall itself there remains only a silent moat in Howe Wood. The village has a social life centred on a ‘pop-up pub’. This and other events like readings and lectures organised by the very energetic Friends of Strethall Church support the fabric of St Mary’s generously and successfully. The name Catmere is given various derivations, most popularly ‘a wildcat-infested pond’, though it seems possible that the ‘cats’ may in reality have been otters.
Martin Rose and David Melford