In the Middle Ages, Ripley was just a few stone cottages and farms around the village green with a few dwellings further afield. Corn was ground at the mill owned by the Abbot of Darley and in 1291 there were “two water-mills with fish ponds” in Ripley. The Ripley area has been industrialised since the late 18th century. One of the earliest companies to take advantage of mineral resources around Ripley was the Butterley Company. The company was formed in 1790 by Benjamin Outram and Francis Beresford. Jessop and Wright joined as partners in 1791. Benjamin Outram and Jessop were pioneering engineers best known for their input into the rail industry and also their engineering of the Cromford Canal. Outram developed the L shaped flange rail and Jessop engineered the cast iron fish belly rail. The Little Eaton Gangway project was one of the engineering feats they completed. The engineering part of the company closed and the site of the Butterley Company was demolished in 2010. The company was latterly in three parts, Butterley Engineering, Butterley Brick and Butterley Aggregates (all separate companies). Over the last 200 years the companies have been a steelworks, coal mining, quarrying, railway, foundry, brickworks. One of the early, and most well-known, examples of the work of the company includes the arched roof of St Pancras railway station in London, recently restored as an international rail terminal. Recent major Butterley achievements were the design and construction of the Falkirk Wheel, a canal boat lift funded by the Millennium Commission and the Spinnaker Tower seen in Portsmouth Harbour as the focus of the regeneration of Portsmouth Harbour.