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 March to Magdalen Road via Wisbech following in September 1968. The section east of Wisbech was subsequently dismantled, but the rest of the route remained open for freight traffic (from Whitemoor Junction) to Wisbech in order to serve the nearby Spillers (later Nestle Purina) pet food factory, Metal Box products and a coal depot. The line was singled in 1972 with the lifting of the down line. Nothing remains of Wisbech East, the station site having been entirely redeveloped and replaced by the Octavia Hill Centre for the handicapped. The Centre was itself subsequently demolished and replaced by housing. The