About the river
The River Stour rises in eastern Cambridgeshire and flows for 22 miles (35 kms) through East Anglia to the North Sea at Harwich.
The Stour forms the boundary between the counties of Suffolk and Essex. It eventually flows into the Stour Estuary near Manningtree.
History of the Stour
The Stour was one of the country's earliest statutory navigations and was in continuous use by commercial traffic for over 200 years.
It was in 1705 that an act of parliament established the Stour's lower reaches as a commercial waterway or ‘navigation'. This was between the town of Sudbury (halfway along the Stour's length) and Cattawade near Manningtree.
The Stour today
Since the decline of commercial activity early in the last century, people predominantly boat on the river using small manually propelled pleasure craft. Most of the lock structures have disappeared and most of the river has largely reverted to a more natural river.
The River Stour now has a greater physical and ecological diversity and generally shallower water. To best appreciate the river, use craft which has a shallow draft and that are small or light enough to be hauled out of the water and carried around occasional structures such as weirs and sluices.
Today much of the Stour Valley is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty. It's rich in wheat, pastureland and fine trees. The estuary provides sheltered water allowing for a variety of boating activities to take place.
The Stour's fame
The river and the surrounding landscape were made famous by the many paintings of the area by John Constable (1776-1837). Constable knew the river and its locality intimately as his father was the local miller. Such was his love of the Stour that the artist continued to paint scenes of the river and nearby villages even after he had left the area to live in London.
In addition to Constable, artists such as Paul Nash and Thomas Gainsborough have also captured the images of the working river on canvas.