Wisbech has one of the oldest purpose-built museums in England, built in 1847.

Illustrations and text about draining the fens

The text reads: The sea-embankments built by the Romans were neglected after they left. Inevitably, the area flooded, and settlements were largely confined to small areas of higher ground.

Some of the earliest drainage work was done by the monks such as those of Thorney. On a local scale, this work was successful, but larger projects, such as the rerouting of the Ouse from Wisbech to Lynn and the cutting of Morton’s Leam, brought silting problems.

In 1621, the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden came to England to repair the banks of the Thames at Dagenham. He was commissioned by Charles I to drain Hatfield Chase, and he then joined the Earl of Bedford in a fen-drainage scheme, involving the creation of several huge new waterways.

However, the engineers had not accounted for the shrinkage of the land when the water had been drained. This meant that riverbanks had to be raised, making them more vulnerable to high pressure: flooding was more disastrous when they broke.

The problems were not solved until steam-powered pumps began to replace the wind engines. Only then did the dream of productive farms and orchards on fertile and permanently reclaimed land approach reality.

Above, left: Early Fenland wind engine
Above, right: Water pump, 1861
Left: Steam pump

Text about Thomas Clarkson

The text reads: The ornate memorial by the Town Bridge is dedicated to the anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. He was born in 1760 at the Old Grammar School, where his father was headmaster. There is also a plaque in York Row, where he lived in a house once owned by Cromwell’s Secretary of State, John Thurloe.

The memorial, designed in 1881 by Sir George Gilbert Scott, also portrays two of Clarkson’s fellow abolitionists, William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp. Wilberforce Is the best-known of them, as he was chosen in 1787 as spokesman by the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

However, it was Clarkson who was the driving force behind the campaign. His Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was a best-seller in 1786. Clarkson organised boycotts and petitions and produced many pamphlets detailing the inhumanity of the slave trade.

Despite the huge profits derived from slavery, 20 years of tireless publicity and effort by Clarkson and his allies created a huge groundswell of public feeling that Parliament was unable to ignore. In 1807, a bill against slave-trading became law. But it made no provision for existing slaves in the British Colonies, who were only freed in 1833. Elsewhere, however, slavery continued.

Prints and text about the Wisbech and Fenland Museum

The text reads: Wisbech has one of the oldest purpose-built museums in England, opened in 1847. Its exhibits had been housed for the previous 12 years in a building in the Old Market. Unfortunately, the new building was constructed over the castle moat, and subsidence caused its brickwork to sag.

The museum’s greatest benefactor, who bequeathed it several thousand items in 1868, was the Rev Chauncey Hare Townshend. He was the owner of several local estates, and his local agent was secretary to the museum committee.

Townshend was a prolific collector. His London house contained over 4,000 books, and 1,400 paintings and prints, as well as collections of fossils, coins, porcelain and glass, clocks, photographs, jewellery, gemstones, maps, stuffed animals, and classical antiques. Two large wagons were needed to bring his bequest to Wisbech.

Townshend became a lifelong friend of Charles Dickens, who dedicated Great Expectations to him, and gave him the manuscript now in the museum. The two had met via a shared interest in ‘mesmerism’, a form of hypnotism then much in fashion, believed to cure nervous disorders.

The museum is an exhibit in itself, having managed to retain much of its original Victorian design and fittings.

Right, top: Chauncey Hare Townshend
Right, below: Townshend Road, c1920

A painting of Wisbech by Eleanor Cherry

External photograph of the building – main entrance