Stowmarket lies on the River Gipping, which is joined by its tributary, a River Rat, to the South of the town. In the 18th century the Gipping was mass produced navigable between Stowmarket & Ipswich by a series of locks. A fresh created canal was referred to as a Ipswich and Stowmarket Navigation.

A town requires its title from either a Anglo-Saxon word ‘Stow’ meaning ‘principal place’, and was granted the market charter within 1347 by Edward III. The bi-weekly market is however held there now.

A church of St Peter & St Mary is in the ‘Decorated’ style & dates to the 14th century. A 16th century parsonage has associations by owning a poet John Milton through his tutor, Dr Thomas Young who became vicar of Stowmarket in 1628. Milton processed regular visits to a town, & ‘Milton’s Tree’ in the evidence of the parsonage is believed to become an outgrowth of one of the numerous trees he planted there.

More luminary residents involved political writer William Godwin, who spent period when minister at a Stowmarket Independent Church, & poet George Crabbe, who attend school in the town.

Stowmarket achieved national fame following of existence often mentioned per broadcaster John Peel who lived nearby until his death around 2004.

Open around 1967, a Museum of East Anglian Life occupies a Seventy acre (283,000 thousand²) places just about a town centre.