William Jessop

Civil engineer, born in Devonport, Devon, SW England, UK. He worked under John Smeaton on canals in Yorkshire and elsewhere. With others he founded the Butterley Iron Works in 1790, and began to manufacture fish-bellied cast-iron rails which marked an important advance in railway track technology. He was involved as chief engineer on the construction of the Grand Junction Canal with its mile-long tunnel at Blisworth, the Surrey Iron Railway (1802), Avon docks at Bristol, and the West India Docks on the Thames. His works put him in the front rank of early British civil engineers.

William Jessop (23 January 1745 - 18 November 1814) was a noted English civil engineer, particularly famed for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. When his father died, William Jessop was taken on as a pupil by Smeaton (who also acted as Jessop’s guardian), working on various canal schemes in Yorkshire.

His projects included:

the Calder and Hebble Navigation (1758-70) the Aire and Calder Navigation the Ure and Ripon Canal (1767) the Chester Canal (May 1778) as a contractor with James Pinkerton the Barnsley Canal (1792-1802) the Grand Canal of Ireland between the River Shannon and Dublin (1773-1805) the Grand Junction Canal (1793-1805 - later part of the Grand Union Canal) the Cromford Canal, Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire the Nottingham Canal (1792-1796) the River Trent Navigation the Grantham Canal (1793-1797 - the first English canal entirely dependent on reservoirs for its water supply) oversight of the Ellesmere Canal – (1793-1805 - detailed design undertaken by Thomas Telford) the Rochdale Canal (1794-1798) the West India Docks and Isle of Dogs canal, London (1800-1802; John Rennie was a consultant on the Docks project) the Surrey Iron Railway, linking Wandsworth and Croydon (1801-1802 – arguably the world's first public railway – albeit horse-drawn) the 'Floating Harbour' in Bristol (1804-1809) harbours at Shoreham-by-Sea and Littlehampton, West Sussex

From 1784 to 1805 Jessop lived in Newark in Nottinghamshire, where he twice served as town mayor.

William's son, Josias Jessop (d 1826) was also a noted canal engineer;