William Jessop

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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.

Jessop was born in Devonport, Devon in 1745, the son of a shipwright known to leading civil engineer John Smeaton through his work on the Eddystone Lighthouse. 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. After working for some years as Smeaton's assistant, Jessop increasingly began to work as an engineer in his own right.

In 1790, he founded (with fellow engineer Benjamin Outram) the Butterley Iron Works in Derbyshire to manufacture (amongst other things) cast-iron edge rails – a design Jessop had used successfully on a horse-drawn railway scheme for coal wagons between Nanpantan and Loughborough, Leicestershire (1789).

His projects included:

• the Calder and Hebble Navigation (1758-70)
• the Aire and Calder Navigation
• the 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)
• the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway (1807-1812; the first railway in Scotland authorised by Act of Parliament)
• 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; he also is credited with surveying and building the Cromford and High Peak Railway.

For a detailed biography see Hadfield, C. and Skempton, A. W. William Jessop, Engineer (Newton Abbot 1979).