The Butterley Gangroad project was initiated in 2012 and was led by the Derbyshire Archaeological Society (DAS) with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. DAS provided the overall governance for the project and a group of local residents and people, with an interest in old railways, completed the research and fieldwork. A paper, detailing the project findings, has been published in the 2014 edition of the DAS Journal.

The Butterley Company (Benjamin Outram & Co. before 1807) operated from 1792 until 2009 and in the early years the company partners described themselves as traders in getting and smelting ironstone, casting and manufacturing iron and burning limestone and getting coal and slack at Butterley and Crich.

The Butterley Gangroad or Crich Railway, as it was then known, was first used in 1793 by Benjamin Outram & Co. to bring limestone down from quarries (mine initially) near Crich to the Cromford Canal at Bullbridge. From there the stone was either sold as burnt lime or transported by canal boat to the Butterley Works near Ripley where it was used in making iron products. The railway may have been the first substantial one where Outram developed his ideas that were subsequently adopted throughout Britain. It was a one of the first railways in the East Midlands, maybe the world, where a“steam locomotive” operated successfully.