In the language of the Ancient Britons, which survives today as Welsh, Cornish and Breton, the neighbouring rivers, the Glen and the Welland seem to have been given contrasting names.

The Welland flowed from the area underlain by the Northampton Sands which in many places are bound together by iron oxide to form ironstone.

The whole scheme cost £723,000, and the Coronation Channel, which was completed in 1953, was named to commemorate the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in the same year.

A little before Guthram Gowt, the Counter Drain turns to the east to reach Pode Hole pumping station,[4] which plays an important part in the drainage of Deeping Fen.

Beyond Guthram Gowt, the river flows in a north-easterly direction, and is flanked on both sides by drainage ditches because the land is low-lying.

Historia Brittonum, an ancient history of Britain traditionally attributed to Nennius, a ninth-century Welsh monk, records that Arthur, the war leader of the Britons fought his first battle against the Anglo-Saxons at the mouth of the River Glein [sic].

In Arthur's time, around the year 500, the north-flowing section of the Glen entered tidal flats lying in Pinchbeck North Fen, to the north-east of Guthram.

Close to the year 500, the spread of Anglian settlement had recently reached Baston, at the other end of this Roman road, on the landward side of this fen but burial at the Urns Farm cemetery alongside King Street then stopped abruptly.

Dugdale, writing his book The History of Imbanking and Drayning of divers Fenns and Marshes in 1662, which was based on personal observations he made during a trip to the Fens in May 1657, and the records of the Fens Office, most of which were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, thought it was the least of the rivers he had seen, and recorded that it "serveth almost to none other use, but to carry away so much of its own water, with the rill descending from Burne, as can be kept between two defensible banks."

[9] Both the Bourne Eau and the Glen were affected by flooding, causing failure of the banks, which was addressed in the Black Sluice Act 1765 (5 Geo.

Corn and wool passed down the river, bound for Boston, while coal and groceries were the principal cargo in the opposite direction.

[9] In 1734, John Grundy, one of the pioneers in applying scientific principles to the solution of civil engineering problems, was asked by the Adventurers of Deeping Fen to consider the drainage of 47 square miles (120 km2) of fenland to the west of Spalding.

The sluice had three openings, each 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, with pointed doors on the downstream site, which closed as the tide rose, and lifting gates on the upstream side, which would be raised to discharge the water.

Phase One, the connection of the South Forty-Foot Drain to The Haven at Boston by a new lock,[16] was completed by December 2008, and was officially opened on 20 March 2009.

[17] Construction of the second phase of the project, which will involve making the South Forty-Foot Drain navigable from Donington to Guthram Gowt, where a connection with the River Glen will be made, has been delayed by the change in the economic climate, and the complexity of the task.

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.