Early recorded use of the river includes the transporting of stone which was used in the rebuilding of Bury St Edmunds Abbey.

It was not until 1789 that six local gentlemen (two of whom were vicars) with foresight realised that because of poor transport, due to badly-maintained turnpike roads, the population and industries were dwindling in the Stowmarket area.

They engaged William Jessop, who employed Isaac Lenny as the surveyor and a parliamentary bill for the construction of the navigation was introduced on 17 February 1790.

They also had powers to build an extension of the navigation from Stowupland Bridge for 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) to the turnpike road that ran to Bury St Edmunds.

[4] An unusual clause in the act prohibited the carrying of fishing tackle by boats using the navigation, for which a fine of £5 could be charged.

Baynes was sacked after less than a month, because of "unaccommodating and improper behaviour", and in November, Dyson and Pinkerton were dismissed for trespassing on land which did not belong to the trustees.

Legal action followed, which caused delays and involved the trustees in extra costs, although some work carried on during the lawsuit.

Smith set up a brickworks in January 1791, and a contract to build six locks was awarded to Samuel Wright, millwright, of Ipswich in June.

He reported that the section from Stowmarket and Needham Market, the other main town on the waterway, was almost complete, but advised that the towpath would need to be raised in places.

He felt that while Jessop had laid out the plans prior to the obtaining of the initial act of Parliament, there had been a failure to adequately survey the river and detail the works that would be required to construct the navigation.

[10] John Rennie replaced William Jessop as engineer in December 1791 and Richard Coats was appointed surveyor at a salary of £200 p.a.

He suggested that the timber locks should be rebuilt, once the navigation began to make a profit, and recommended that another act of Parliament should be obtained, to raise more money.

[14] During 1791, when the trustees were negotiating with John Rennie, they had asked him to assess an extension of the navigation from Stowmarket to the River Lark at Bury St Edmunds, but this was not pursued.

[15] When the Eastern Union Railway announced plans for an extension from Ipswich to Stowmarket in 1844, the trustees negotiated with the company to lease their canal.

They engaged a parliamentary agent to handle the details, who realised that the original act of Parliament, dating from 1790, expressly prohibited the trustees from leasing the canal.

The trustees sought an act of Parliament to authorise this, which contained a clause requiring the railway company to maintain the navigation.

The House of Lords were not convinced that the clause was strong enough, and amended it to ensure that the railway had to maintain it "in as good a state and condition as the same shall be at the time of passing of the Act."

The navigation was by this time in a poor condition, with little traffic, but because of the clause in the 1846 act, the railway company offered the trustees £2,000 in lieu of repairs.

The companies paid lower tolls because they helped to maintain the lock gates and clear weeds from the channel.

A final meeting was held on 16 March 1934, when debts were settled, and the remaining money was split between East Suffolk County Council and the catchment board, who had responsibility for the river under the terms of the Land Drainage Act 1930.

[23] In 2007, the Inland Waterways Association decided that it would be better to set up a separate organisation to manage restoration of the navigation, and the River Gipping Trust was formed in May of that year.

Immediately after Station Road bridge is The Maltings, originally a malthouse, but adapted as a warehouse to serve the navigation.

Bosmere lock is located below the bridge,[25] and the four-storey timber-framed and weatherboarded mill building was used as a restaurant, but subsequently converted to private flats.

A new footbridge has been installed and a permissive path runs along the river providing an alternative path to the one that runs alongside the railway, some 0.5km away from the river.The mill, close to a sixteenth-century mill house, was built in nineteenth century, and has three storeys with an attic storey containing storage bins.

[39] There is a red-brick humped backed bridge over the tail of the adjacent lock, which was repaired with gault brick in the nineteenth century.

To the south of the 90-metre (98 yd) building, Edward Packard established the world's first superphosphate factory between 1851 and 1854, and the two companies amalgamated soon after Joseph Fison set up his rival enterprise in 1858.

[44] Somersham Watercouse flows around the western edge of the Suffolk Water Park, and joins the west bank.

[45] After another crossing under the railway, the river skirts the eastern edge of Bramford and circles a hill, on top of which is Sproughton Manor, a grade II listed house built for Col Henry Phillipps in 1863 by the architect William Eden Nesfield.

There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of invertebrates, angiosperms and fish.

Like most rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) and mercury compounds, none of which had previously been included in the assessment.