Thomas Hawksley

Thomas Hawksley ( born July 12, 1807 in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, † September 15, 1893 in Kensington ( London) ) was an English civil engineer of the 19th century, which was particularly concerned with water supply.

He was the son of John Hawksley and Mary Whittle and was born in Arnold near Nottingham on July 12, 1807. Hawksley was from the age of 15 on largely self-taught, since he was at a local architectural firm that also worked on a variety of water supply projects.

He remained particularly a large number of plants in his home country connected. He was an engineer at the Nottingham Gas Light and Coke Company and the Nottingham City works for more than half a century, where he finished his career in the waterworks of Trent Bridge ( 1831) early. This plant was Britain's first high-pressure water supply. It prevented that dirt could penetrate into the pipe network.

This success meant that he was commissioned by many major water supply projects throughout England, including those in Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Leeds, Derby, Darlington, Oxford, Cambridge, Sunderland, Wakefield and Northampton. He also carried out drainage projects, including in Birmingham, Worcester and Windsor.

Hawksley 1852 founded his own engineering office in Westminster, London. He was the first president of the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers ( three years from 1863), member of the Royal Society, and in 1871 was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers ( a body which his son Charles later in 1901 held ). From 1876-1877 he was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

From 1869 to 1879 Hawksley worked as a consultant in the construction of reservoirs Lindley Wood, Swinsty and Fewston for the Leeds Waterworks Company.

He died in 1893 in Kensington, London and is buried in his family grave in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. In December 2007, a granite monument was erected on his previously unmarked grave.

Thomas Hawksley was the first in four generations of outstanding municipal water management engineers, followed by his son Charles Hawksley, his grandson Kenneth Phipson Hawksley, and his great-grandson Thomas Edwin Hawksley († 1972). The Institution of Mechanical Engineers holds his honor still from an annual lecture in his honor.