Wisbech Ouse being a common Celtic word relating to water, and the name of a river that once flowed through the town. Alternatively, the first element may derive from the River Whissey which used to run to Wisbech or possibly ‘marshy-meadow valley or ridge’. OE Wisc or wisc + bece or baec. During the Iron Age, the area where Wisbech would develop lay in the west of the Brythonic Iceni tribe's territory. Icenian coins are known from both March and Wisbech. Like the rest of Cambridgeshire, Wisbech was part of the Kingdom of East Anglia after the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The first
Wisbech East railway station crossing. In June 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies published a report indicating that the reopening of the line to Wisbech and construction of a new station could be viable, in that the ratio of business, economic and social benefits to costs would be just over 1. It was the Eastern Counties Railway which first reached Wisbech from the south in May 1847 with the opening of a line from St Ives via March; a temporary wooden station named "Wisbeach" was built on the site of the future Wisbech goods yard (at grid reference TF458093). The East Anglian Railways