GUYHIRN WITH RINGSEND, these places were formed into an ecclesiastical parish March 28, 1871, from the civil parishes of Wisbech St. Peter and St. Mary, including the hamlet of Thorney Toll, which is 3 ½ miles west, and a portion of Wisbech St. Mary nearly the whole of Wisbech Fen.

GUYHIRN is on the new Nene navigable river, here crossed by an iron girder bridge, and has a station on the Great Eastern and Great Northern joint railway: it is 3 miles north-west from March Junction station on the Great Eastern and Great Northern railways and 6 south-west from Wisbech, and is in the Northern division of the county, Wisbech hundred, petty sessional division, Union and county court district, rural deanery of Wisbech and in the peculiar archidiaconal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely. The church of St. Mary Magdalene, erected at a cost of £3,700 and consecrated in 1878, is built upon the site of an earlier church of the same name, which existed here in the 15th century: the present edifice, designed by the late Sir G. Gilbert Scott R.A. consists of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch and a western turret containing 3 bells: the eagle lectern was carved by the Hon. Mrs. Montgomery, of Edinburgh; the stone pulpit and font were given by friends from Devonshire and the parishioners: there are memorial windows to William Herbert Carpenter, d. 1878, and others to the Marriott family, landowners of this parish: the church affords 350 sittings. The register dates from the year 1871. The living is a vicarage, net yearly value £300, including 58 acres of glebe, with residence, in the gift of the Bishop of Ely, and held since 1902 by the Rev. William Robinson, of St. Aidan’s. The old chapel of ease, now used as a mortuary chapel, is a plain building of stone, erected in 1660, and has a bell dated 1637. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel and a Wesleyan chapel at Ringsend. The Marriott charity of £250, the interest of which is to be distributed annually by the vicar and churchwardens to the aged poor of Guyhirn, was given by the late Samuel Marriott esq. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the representatives of the late S. Marriott esq. and William Goddard Jackson esq. of Duddington, are the chief landowners. At Thorney Toll is a school church and a Catholic chapel. The soil is clay and silt; subsoil, silt. The chief crops are potatoes, wheat and oats, and an industry has recently sprung up in the cultivation of fruit and flowers. The population in 1901 was 1,116.

Public Elementary Schools

Guyhirn (mixed), erected, with teacher’s house, in 1875, at a cost of about £800, for 120 children; average attendance, 84.

Ringsend (mixed), erected in 1860 & enlarged in 1894, for 65 children; average attendance, 48.

Thorney Toll (mixed), erected in 1872, for 70 children; average attendance, 40.

Sunday school, endowed with £300, left in the year 1827 by Dr. Jobson, a former vicar of Wisbech, & invested in £2 ¾ per Cent. Consols. The Marriott charity is invested in the same way.