Josias Jessop was responsible for the repair and maintenance of Rudyerd's Tower, a wooden lighthouse on the Eddystone Rock.

John Smeaton, a leading civil engineer, drew up plans for a new stone lighthouse and Josias became responsible for the overseeing the building work.

This had begun as a Government project in 1753, and it had taken seventeen years to build fourteen miles (21 km) of canal from the Dublin end.

Having seen to all of the important details Jessop returned to England, leaving a deputy in charge to complete the canal.

In 1793, the Derwent Viaduct partially collapsed, and Jessop shouldered the blame, saying that he had not made the front walls strong enough.

[1] In 1790 Jessop founded, jointly with partners Benjamin Outram, Francis Beresford and John Wright, 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).

[2] The Oxford Canal had been built by James Brindley and carried coal to large parts of southern England.

Whilst the three-arch stone aqueduct was being built, a set of nine temporary locks were used to carry the canal down one side of the valley and up the other.

Jessop's temporary solution was a railway line laid over the ridge to carry traffic until the tunnel was completed.

[1] In 1799 separate proposals were put forward for a canal from London to Portsmouth and for a tramway carrying horse-drawn carriages over the same route.

The first part of the proposed Surrey Iron Railway was to be from Wandsworth to Croydon, and Jessop was asked for his opinion on the two opposing schemes.

He declared that the tramway was a better scheme, as a canal would require too much water and would unduly reduce the supply in the River Wandle.

[2] In his later life, Jessop became increasingly inflicted by a form of paralysis, and 1805 marked the end of his active career.

Unlike some engineers, such as George Stephenson, Jessop did not stoop to undignified wrangles with fellow professionals.