Wisbech

Coordinates: 52°39′50″N 0°09′36″E / 52.664°N 0.160°E / 52.664; 0.160

Wisbech (/ˈwɪzbiːtʃ/) is a market town, inland port and civil parish with a population of 31,573 in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, England. The tidal River Nene runs through the centre of the town and is spanned by two bridges. The name is 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. Since 2011 Wisbech has become the second largest town in Cambridgeshire (after St Neots;Cambridge and Peterborough are both cities) with a population of over 31,000.

Before the Local Government Act 1972 came into force in 1974 Wisbech was a municipal borough; it is now a civil parish in the Fenland District.

History

During the Iron Age, the area where Wisbech would develop lay in the west of the Brythonic Iceni tribe's territory. Like the rest of Cambridgeshire, Wisbech was part of the kingdom of East Anglia after the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

Wisbech (UK Parliament constituency)

Wisbech is a former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituency. It was created upon the abolition of an undivided Cambridgeshire county constituency in 1885 and was itself abolished in 1918.

Boundaries

The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 split the former three-member Cambridgeshire parliamentary county into three single-member divisions. One of these was the Northern or Wisbech Division. During the committee stage of the 1885 bill, the MP for Cambridge University, Henry Raikes made an unsuccessful attempt to rename the constituency as the Northern or Isle of Ely Division.

The constituency consisted of the towns of Chatteris, March, Whittlesey and Wisbech with the surrounding parishes of Benwick, Doddington, Downham, Elm, Leverington, Littleport, Manea, Newton, Parson Drove, Thorney, Tydd St Giles, Welches Dam and Wimblington.

The area was bounded by the constituencies of Spalding to the north, North West Norfolk and South West Norfolk to the east, the other Cambridgeshire divisions of Newmarket and Chesterton to the south and Ramsey, Peterborough and North Northamptonshire to the west.