In 1812, William Brunton, an engineer for the company, produced his remarkable Steam Horse locomotive The steep wagonway to the Cromford Canal at Bullbridge was called the Butterley Gangroad and incorporated the world's oldest surviving railway tunnel, at Fritchley (built 1793). The company also owned Hilt's Quarry at Crich, which supplied limestone for the ironworks and for the limekilns at Bullbridge, providing lime for farmers and for the increasing amount of building work.

In 1814 the company produced the iron work for Vauxhall Bridge over the River Thames. Outram died in 1805 and the name changed to the Butterley Company, with one of Jessop's sons, also William, taking over. By the second decade of the next century the company had expanded with another works at Codnor Park in Codnor, both works then having two blast furnaces, and output had risen to around 4,500 tons per year.īlast furnace from 1790 exposed through building demolition in 1986 In 1793 the French Revolutionary Wars broke out and by 1796 the blast furnace was producing nearly a thousand tons of pig iron a year. The following year they were joined by Jessop and John, the grandson of Ichabod Wright, a wealthy Nottingham banker who was betrothed to Beresford's daughter and who owned the Butterley Park estate. Fortuitously, Butterley Hall fell vacant and in 1790 Outram, with the financial assistance of Francis Beresford, bought it and its estate. In digging Butterley Tunnel for the Cromford Canal, coal and iron were discovered.

In 1793, William Jessop, with the assistance of Benjamin Outram, constructed the Cromford Canal to connect Pinxton and Cromford with the Erewash Canal. After the Norman Conquest, nearby Duffield Frith was the property of the de Ferrers family who were iron masters in Normandy. This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited at least since the Middle Ages.

Utterly butterley