Wisbech is a market town on the Rover Nene in the Fenland district of Cambridgeshire, in the far NE of the county on the border with Norfolk. The church of St Peter and St Paul is close to the Market Place in the town centre. The earliest fabric suggests the existence of a late-12thc., six-bay aisled nave with a W tower and a chancel of unknown form. Towards the end of the 13thc. the church was almost doubled in width by widening the N aisle and replacing the S aisle with a second nave, as wide as the first, and equipped with its own chancel and S aisle. At the same time or slightly later the original chancel was enlarged in both length and width, so that it was now wider than the original nave, to which it was linked by a diagonal bay. An open arcade separated the two chancels. Around 1500 the W tower collapsed, taking the 12thc. S arcade with it. The arcade was replaced and a new tower built, detached from the church at the NW and bearing the arms of Bishop Goodrick (1534–54). Remains of the original tower survive in the form of its N and S arches and the E arch bases. The church therefore consists of a double nave with aisles to N and S, and arcades of (from N to S) c.1200, c.1500, and c.1300; a two-storey 14thc. S porch; a double chancel; W tower arches but no W tower, and a detached NW tower of the 1530s. Construction is of ashlar, that on the S of roughly coursed stones. The tower is of regular large blocks. Romanesque sculpture is found on the capitals of the tower arches and the N nave arcade.

Around the year 1000 Oswy and Leoflede gave the manor of Wisbech to Ely Abbey. In 1086 ir was held by the Abbot, and in 1109 the vill was divided between the Convent and the Bishop. The bishop's manor, later Wisbech Barton, remained in the hands of successive bishops until 1652, while the Convent's manor, called Wisbech Murrow, became Wisbech St Mary, to the W of the main settlement.

The nave pier system has a complex rhythm, with extra arch decoration at the E end. The form of the original arch to bay (i) and the original E respond are unfortunately not known, but it must be remembered that the nave to which this arcade originally belonged had a narrower, and presumably a shorter chancel, and liturgically the E bays might well have formed part of the choir.