BELVOIR CASTLE RAILWAY

There are many accounts of early railway systems and the 18th Century abounded with much invention and development in this field. Mining and quarrying were prosperous industries so it’s little wonder that the development of wheel tracked ‘wagons’ rapidly evolved. But who invented what and when, is very hard to establish. Iron rails had been produced as early as the 1760s but the first record of William Jessop’s involvement was in 1791 when he was appointed engineer to the Leicester Navigation Company for the construction of a railway. This was the same year that Jessop joined forces with Benjamin Outram to form Butterley Iron Works. The Leicester navigation was quite an ambitious project as it was envisaged to transport coal from Leicestershire mines to Loughborough and then on to Leicester via the River Soar navigation. The tricky part was to get the coal from the mines to Loughborough which necessitated building a railway at both ends of a newly constructed canal. Construction was started in 1792 but it’s interesting to note that it was not Butterley Iron Works who supplied the rails for the contract, but Butler’s of Chesterfield. This seems unusual especially as Outram, Jessop’s fellow director at Butterley’s, visited the project and was reimbursed for ‘carrying out numerous visits to measure water levels’. During this period Jessop was very involved in the construction of numerous canals and, on top of this work, was asked to survey a route for the Grantham Canal. His proposed route passed through the Duke of Rutland’s property so he must have made contact with the Duke’s agent and Belvoir Estate’s manager, William King. King became an enthusiastic supporter of the canal seeing the benefits it could bring to the estate and surrounding farms and exerted a notable influence over Parliament’s decision to allow the project to proceed. Jessop obviously thought well of him for he appointed King to manage the canal’s construction from Hickling to Grantham. William King continued to manage the Belvoir estate until 1801 after which records show him producing a series of maps for the area surrounding the estate including a hunting map in 1806, presumably a skill he had acquired from Jessop. Elizabeth Howard, of Castle Howard married John, the 5th Duke of Rutland in 1799 and set about redesigning the castle with architect James Wyatt. She also incorporated some of the proposals put forward by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to create subterranean tunnels for the access of servants and produce instead of using the main entrance. Once these tunnels were completed the order was placed in 1814 for a railway to be constructed which would link the Grantham Canal to the Castle for the supply of coal and victuals. How influential William King had been on the decision to install a Butterley railway isn’t clear but maybe his early dealings with William Jessop (Snr), the design’s originator, could have been a contributing factor. In 1815 Butterley Iron Works, under the management of William Jessop (Jnr) and his brother Josias, carried out the installation but sadly their father, William Jessop (Snr), never saw it completed as he died the previous year. The railway continued in service until 1919 after which it lain derelict until being dismantled in 1941 for scrap.

WILLIAM JESSOP’S RAIL