River Stour (Suffolk)
The Constable Country river, navigable from Sudbury down to the tide at Cattawade along the Essex–Suffolk border
This is the Suffolk Stour, which runs along the border between Suffolk and Essex to reach the sea at Harwich — not the Dorset Stour of Blandford and Bournemouth, nor the Kentish Stour of Canterbury, both of which share the name. From Sudbury down to the tideway at Cattawade it is a navigation, made passable in the 18th century by a series of locks, and it runs for roughly twenty-five miles through the gentle valley that John Constable painted.
The navigation was opened in 1705 to carry coal, corn and bricks between Sudbury and the coast, and lighters worked it for two hundred years. It fell out of use by the First World War, and most of its locks were left to decay; since 1968 the River Stour Trust has restored several, including the locks at Flatford, Dedham and Stratford St Mary that appear in Constable’s pictures. Powered boats are now generally limited to the upper part between Sudbury and Henny Mill, but canoes and other unpowered craft can travel the whole length.
The valley is the reason most people come. This is Constable Country — Dedham with its tall church tower, Flatford with its mill and Willy Lott’s cottage, Nayland and the quiet water meadows between them — and the landscape is protected as the Dedham Vale National Landscape. It has changed remarkably little from the scenes he painted two centuries ago.
The river is looked after by the Environment Agency, with the Stour Trust running boat trips at Sudbury and Flatford. Both ends and several villages between are easy to reach by road, and the river is best explored on foot along the bank or by canoe.
