Early Days
Clement Wilks was born at Peckham Rye, Surrey, 15 February 1819, the youngest son of the Rev. Mark Wilks, of Paris. He spent most of his early years in France and Switzerland and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at the Collège de Paris in 1836.
After being engaged for a short time on the Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Laye railway, which opened in 1837, he went to England and was articled to Sir Charles Fox, then of the London works and Resident Engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway. His professional education was continued with Messrs. Fox, Henderson and Co. until 1841. In 1842 he had the chief management of a French engineering establishment on the Garonne, where he remained for three or four years. He then returned to England and was engaged to work with Mr. George Watson Buck, M.Inst.C.E. on the Ely and Huntingdon railway, then in the course of construction. After Mr. Buck's retirement from ill-health, he was associated with Mr. John Hawkshaw in surveying for the Manchester and Southport line and subsequently for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway near Heckmondwike.
In 1850 he was engaged in superintending the construction of various public buildings in London, under the direction of the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, a model of one of which was erected in connection with the Great Exhibition of 1851.
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