Wistow is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England.

Wistow is a farming community that has grown up around the central features of its church and manor house.

In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth.

The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands.

[4] The tax assessment in the Domesday Book was known as geld or danegeld and was a type of land-tax based on the hide or ploughland.

A parish council is responsible for providing and maintaining a variety of local services including allotments and a cemetery; grass cutting and tree planting within public open spaces such as a village green or playing fields.

For Wistow the highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council which has administration buildings in Cambridge.

[12] Wistow is part of the electoral division of Warboys and Upwood[10] and is represented on the county council by one councillor.

The parish of Wistow consists of a strip of land running north-east and south-west (some 4 miles long) and of varying breadth.

In early days the possession of a portion of the fen for the supply of reeds for thatching, fuel, and summer grazing for stock, was very important, and to obtain these advantages Wistow was connected with the fen by a narrow strip of land about 300 yards wide.

The village is rather more than half a mile west of the road from Ramsey to St. Ives, and on the west side of a brook that rises in Abbots Ripton and crosses Kings Ripton; it then partly bounds and partly passes through Wistow, emptying itself at Ramsey into the Fen drainage system.

The compact little village is on a slight slope facing east, all but thirteen houses being within a quarter of a mile of the church.

It is principally ranged round roads forming an irregular four-sided figure with the church at the south-west corner.