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Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen is a civil parish and village in the English county of Norfolk. It is 6 miles (9.7 km) south of the town of King's Lynn on the west bank of the River Great Ouse. It covers an area of 17.76 km2 (6.86 sq mi) and had a population of 729 in 304 households in the 2011 UK census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the King's Lynn and West Norfolk District. In the Domesday Book of 1086, it appears that all three [four?] of the Wiggenhall parishes were at that time a single parish named Wiggenhall, of modest size and sharing a water mill with Runcton Holme on the old Wiggenhall Eau (the watercourse which ran through the parish before the advent of the Great Ouse in the 13th century). The earliest evidence of settlement is the parish church of St Mary Magdalen, which is situated in the very northeastern corner of the parish. Most of the early settlement appears to have occurred here, probably due to the presence of a levee along the western side of the River Great Ouse, made of silts deposited by a former watercourse, the Wiggenhall Eau. The church itself is largely Perpendicular in style, but the tower may date from as early as the 13th century, which is corroborated by the entry in the Register of Crabhouse Priory which tells of the nuns taking refuge at the Church from a flood in the early 13th century. Today the church is almost entirely red brick, with a façade that is the result of a thoroughly 15th century rebuilding. The Parish contains two centres of population: around the Parish Church in the North, and to the South of Crabhouse Priory in the far South, now known as Stowbridge, which also extends into neighbouring parishes and is redirected to Stow Bardolph. John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, KG, Earl Marshal (c.1425 – 22 August 1485) (WR Person:John Howard (264)) was the grandson of Sir John Howard of Wiggenhall. A tidal bore which travels up the Great Ouse which is the area's most significant topographical feature. Magdalen Gate railway station was the name of the station on the Great Eastern Railway. A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalene from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
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