Editing River Gipping (section)

===Expansion===
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.<ref name=rgt/> 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.{{sfn |Boyes |Russell |1977 |p=94}}