T & C Hawksley and Company

T & C Hawksley and Company, civil engineers

T & C Hawksley and Company was established by Thomas Hawksley (1807-1893), an English civil engineer particularly associated with early water supply and coal gas engineering projects. One of his most notable projects was the Trent Bridge waterworks in 1851 which delivered Britain's first high pressure 'constant supply', preventing contamination entering the supply of clean water mains. Whilst Hawksley did not invent the principle of permanent water supply using high pressure, he was the first engineer to apply it to the very real problem of supplying a large industrial town, Nottingham. As such, he became appointed to several other major water supply projects across England.

In 1852, Hawksley set up his own engineering practice in Westminster, London and, in 1866, Hawksley took his son Charles (1839-1917) into partnership. Between 1869 and 1879, Hawksley acted as consultant to the construction of Lindley Wood, Swinsty and Fewston reservoirs for the Leeds Waterworks Company. As well as being the first to provide a town with permanent water supply, he is also credited with being the first engineer to use pressure grouting to control water leakage under an embankment at Tunstall Reservoir in 1876 and Cown Reservoir in 1877-8.

Thomas Hawksley died in 1893 and, in 1900, Charles Hawksley took his son Kenneth Phipson Hawksley into partnership. Charles Hawksley died in 1917.