River Gipping
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. With the navigation thriving, there were two proposals for canals from Ipswich to Eye, Suffolk in 1819. A meeting was held in January at Eye, which was chaired by Charles Cornwallis, 2nd Marquess Cornwallis. It considered two reports, one proposed by the civil engineer William Cubitt, which involved a tunnel through the hills at Mendlesham, with the estimated cost exceeding £100,000, and another, for a canal over the hills, costing £80,000. Both were thought to be too expensive to implement, but a third proposal emerged, for an extension from the River Gipping at Needham Market, which would follow the valley of a tributary through Creeting St Mary to Earl Stonham, where a basin would be built beside the turnpike road (now the A140 road). This would enable waggons to make a round trip from Eye in a single day, rather than the two days that a trip to Ipswich took. The scheme was estimated to cost £12,000, and shares in it were offered at the meeting. Although many were taken up, the scheme did not advance any further.
Vicar Water
The river starts at a series of small lakes, at the western edge of the country park. They occupy the site of a larger artificial lake, marked on the 1885 map as having three sluices into the main channel. The river used to start before the lake, but this area has been affected by railway construction, and a large settling pond was built as part of the mine workings, where the stream once was. The river continues along the southern edge of Clipstone and the northern edge of the country park, to reach the "V"-shaped Vicar Pond, which is now a coarse fishery. Below the pond, the course is crossed by several redundant railway bridges, once associated with the colliery, and the National Cycle Network Route 6 runs parallel to it. It runs northwards at this point, to reach King's Clipstone, and the remains of the hunting lodge, to pass under the B6030 Mansfield Road, and join the River Maun.