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 authentic references to Wisbech occur in a charter dated 664 granting the Abbey at Medehamstead (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. 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