Wisbech prior to drainage schemes, it sat on the river Great Ouse. The port is Cambridgeshire's only gateway to the sea. In 1631 Sir Cornelius Vermuyden built the Horseshoe Sluice at Wisbech at a cost of £8,000. In 1680 the trade of Wisbech had increased sufficiently for the port to be reckoned independent and no longer a member of King's Lynn. In 1720 the corporation was licensed to buoy the channel for the first time. By 1751 it was possible in a dry year to walk across the river bed under Wisbech Bridge. Ship building was carried out in the late
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