Wisbech ( ) is a market town, inland port and civil parish in the Fenland district in Cambridgeshire, England. In 2011 it had a population of 31,573. The town lies in the far north-east of Cambridgeshire, bordering Norfolk and only 5 miles (8 km) south of Lincolnshire. The tidal River Nene running through the town is spanned by two road bridges. Wisbech is in the Isle of Ely (a former administrative county) and has been described as "the Capital of The Fens".
Wisbech is noteworthy for its fine examples of Georgian architecture, particularly the parade of houses along the North Brink, which includes the National Trust property of Peckover House and the Crescent, part of a circus surrounding Wisbech Castle.
History
Toponymy The place name "Wisbech" is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (post-Conquest Peterborough insertion to manuscript E) for the year 656, where it appears as Wisbeach. It is recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wisbeach. The name Wisbech is popularly believed to mean "on the back of the (River) Ouse", Ouse being a common Celtic word relating to water and the name of a river that once flowed through the town. A more scholarly opinion is that the first element derives from the River Wissey, which used to run to Wisbech, and that the name means 'the valley of the river Wissey'.Eilert Ekwall, The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, p.526. A wide range of spellings is found on trade tokens in the Wisbech & Fenland Museum and in newspapers, books, maps and other documents, e.g. Wisbece, Wisebece, Wisbbece, Wysbeche, Wisbeche, Wissebeche, Wysebeche, Wysbech, Wyxbech, Wyssebeche, Wisbidge, Wisbich and Wisbitch, until the spelling of the name of the town was fixed by the local council in the 19th century.
Pre-Roman During the Iron Age, the area where Wisbech would develop lay in the west of the Brythonic Iceni tribe's territory. Icenian coins have been found in both March and Wisbech. A reference, in the Red Book of Thorney, to "a settlement in the middle of a vast wood," may have been Wisbech's earliest incarnation.
Anglo-Saxon Like the rest of Cambridgeshire, Wisbech was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia. It served as a port on The Wash.
The earliest authentic references to Wisbech occur in charters. in 657 it appeared in a charter of the Mercian King Wulfere, and in another dated 664 granting the Abbey at Medeshamstede (now Peterborough) land in Wisbech and in 1000, when Oswy and Leoflede, on the admission of their son Aelfwin as a monk, gave the vill to the monastery of Ely.J. Bentham, Hist. Ely, 87.
Norman The folktale of Tom Hickathrift or Wisbech Giant is sometimes set about the time of the Norman Invasion.
In 1086, when Wisbech was held by the abbot, there may have been some 65 to 70 families, or about 300 to 350 persons, in Wisbech manor. However, Wisbech (which is the only one of the Marshland vills of the Isle to be mentioned in the Domesday Book) probably comprised the whole area from Tydd Gote down to the far end of Upwell at Welney.Wisbech: Manors', A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 4: City of Ely; Ely, N. and S. Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds (2002), pp. 243–245.
A castle was built by William I to fortify the site. At the time of Domesday (1086) the population was that of a large village. Some were farmers and others were fishermen.
Richard I gave Wisbech a charter exempting the residents from paying tolls at markets across England. King John of England visited the castle on 12 October 1216 as he came from Bishop's Lynn. Tradition has it that his baggage train was lost to the incoming tide of The Wash. Treasure hunters still seek the lost royal treasure.
On 12 November 1236 the village of Wisbech was inundated by the sea. Hundreds were drowned, entire flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were destroyed, trees felled and ships lost. The castle was "utterly destroyed" but was rebuilt by 1246 when the constable or keeper was William Justice.
King Edward II visited Wisbech in 1292, 1298, 1300 and 1305.
In 1333–4 the kiln in the town was producing 120,000 bricks. There were several fisheries belonging to the manor of Wisbech and in the 1350s the reeves of Walton and Leverington each sent a porpoise to Wisbech Castle, and the reeve of Terrington a swordfish.
Wisbech Grammar School dates back to 1379 or earlier. The register of Bishop John Fordham of Ely records the appointment of a Master of the Grammar Scholars in 1407.
Edward IV visited Wisbech in 1469.
Early Modern
In 1549, after the important Holy Trinity Guild was dissolved with other religious guilds, Wisbech was incorporated as a borough under a charter from Edward VI. In the same year, William Bellman gave a plot of land for the Wisbech Grammar School schoolhouse.
During the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, there was a state ecclesiastical prison in Wisbech for Catholics, many of whom died there owing to the insanitary conditions. A dispute arising amongst the Catholic prisoners was widely known as the Wisbech Stirs. In 1588 it is claimed that Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham were committed to Wisbech Castle on the approach of the Spanish Armada. Among those held there was John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster.
The palace was demolished and replaced with John Thurloe's mansion in the mid-17th century, and Thurloe's mansion demolished in 1816 by Joseph Medworth, who also developed The Circus comprising The Crescent, Union Place and Ely Place with Museum Square and Castle Square familiar as the settings in numerous costume dramas.
In 1620 former Wisbech residents William White and Dorothea Bradford (née May) sailed on the Mayflower to the New World with her husband William Bradford, later to be Governor Bradford.
English Civil War and Commonwealth Across the Eastern Counties, Oliver Cromwell's powerful Eastern Association was eventually dominant. However, to begin with, there had been an element of Royalist sympathy within Wisbech. Bishop Matthew Wren was a staunch supporter of Charles I but even in 1640 was unpopular in Wisbech, after discovering his absence from a 'Commission of Sewers' meeting at the Castle, a crowd of soldiers plundered shops of some of his supporters. The town was near the frontier of the Parliamentary and Royalist forces in 1643. The Castle and town were put into a state of readiness and reinforced. A troop of horse was raised. Locally based troops took part in the Siege of Crowland in 1642. The town controlled the route from Lincolnshire to Norfolk particularly during the Siege of King's Lynn in 1643 as it prevented reinforcements by land of the Royalists holding the Norfolk port.
A town library was founded .
In 1656 the bishop's palace was replaced by Thurloe's mansion however after the Restoration the property reverted to the Bishops of Ely.
Eighteenth century Soap was taxed and manufacturers such as the Wisbech Soap Company required a licence. Based in an Old Market property facing the river, they were able to receive oil from the blubber yards of King's Lynn as well as coal, wood for casks and olive oil used in making the coarse, sweet and grey (speckled) soaps they produced from 1716 to about 1770.
Wisbech's first workhouse was located in Albion Place and opened in 1722. It could accommodate three hundred inmates and cost £2,000. Bank House, with its walled garden, was built in 1722 and purchased by the Quaker Peckover banking family in the 1790s. The Peckover Bank later became part of Barclays Bank. The house is now owned by the National Trust and known as Peckover House.
In the 17th century, the inhabitants of the Fens became known as the "Fen Tigers" for their resistance to the draining of the common marshes. But the farmland created by drainage transformed Wisbech into a wealthy port handling agricultural produce. It was from this period that much of the town's architectural richness originates.
Wisbech sat on the estuary of the River Great Ouse, but silting caused the coastline to move north, and the River Nene was diverted to serve the town.
In 1781 Wisbech Literary Society was formed at the house of Jonathan Peckover.
Theatres in both Pickard's Lane (a barn) and North End and a third (temporary structure) in the High Street are referred to. A new theatre (now part of the Angles Theatre had been built in Deadman's Lane (later Great Church Street, now Alexandra Road) now Angles Theatre c. 1790. It was used to hold the auction of the contents of the castle, part of the estate of Edward Southwell on 8 November 1791.
One of the earliest Female Friendly Societies was the Wisbech Female Friendly Society instituted on 1 February 1796.
Nineteenth century Wisbech and Ely shared the Isle of Ely Assizes, as a result the 1819 trial of Israel Garner and James Colbank, two local men, took place in Ely and sentence of hanging took place in Wisbech. Wisbech Regatta was first held in 1850.
June 1858 The Russian Gun. —During the past week a brass plate has been added to the Russian Gun, bearing the inscription: — "This trophy of the late Russian War, presented by Queen Victoria to the Burgesses of Wisbech. Thomas Steed Watson, Mayor, 1858.
The Isle of Ely and Wisbech Advertiser was founded in 1845.
The Wisbech & Fenland Museum opened in 1847 and continues to collect, care for and interpret the natural and cultural heritage of Wisbech and the surrounding area.
On 1 March 1848 Eastern Counties Railway opened Wisbeach (sic) station (later renamed Wisbech East railway station). It closed on 9 September 1968.
In the 1853–54 cholera epidemic 176 deaths were reported in the town in 1854. The Wisbech death rate (49 per 10,000) was the fourth highest in the country. The following year saw £8,000 expenditure on sewerage works and £13,400 on water supplies.
New public buildings such as the Exchange Hall and Public Hall (1851) provided modern larger venues for theatrical and other events. Fanny Kemble gave Shakespearean readings in 1855 at the Public Hall.
On Sunday 29 June 1857 a mob entered the town and broke the corn exchange's windows and seized corn and demanded money from shopkeepers. On July the gentry and traders recruited about 500 men and went to Upwell, captured 60 people and placed them in irons. On 4 September a report was made to the lords justices of 14 malefactors condemned at Wisbech for a riot; two were sentenced to be executed the following Saturday and twelve for transportation. The Wisbech Working Men's Club and Institute was formed in 1864. It was once considered one of the most financially successful of its type in England. It remains one of the oldest.
In 1864 the castle estate was purchased by Alexander Peckover. In 1932 his descendant Alexandrina Peckover gave to the borough council a piece of land to be laid out as an ornamental garden adjoining the War memorial. The town hosted the British Archaeological Association's annual Congress in 1878.
In August 1883 Wisbech and Upwell Tramway opened. It eventually closed in 1966 (passenger services finished in 1927). The steam trams were replaced by diesels in 1952.
The Wisbech Standard newspaper was founded in 1888 and ceased printing in 2022.
Twentieth century In April 1904 the borough council contracted with the National Electric Construction Company Ltd for the installation of electric street lighting.
On 30 October 1913 the Riot Act was read by the mayor in response to civil unrest in response to the death of the popular surgeon Doctor Horace Dimock. He had been arrested on charges of criminal libel on the information of Dr Meacock. On hearing that Dimock had taken his own life a crowd formed and smashed the windows of Meacock's residence on the North Brink. The police charged the crowds and cleared the streets.
The Wisbech Canal joining the River Nene at Wisbech was subsequently filled in and became the dual carriageway leading into the town from the east (now crossing the bypass).