Sir Alexander Richardson Binnie was a British civil engineer responsible for several major engineering projects, including several associated with crossings of the River Thames in London. He was born in London to a Scottish father, Alexander Binnie, and Hannah Carr from Castle Sowerby, Cumberland. He was baptised at the Swallow StreetScotch Church, where his grandfather Alexander Birnie was an elder. He trained as an engineer by being articled in 1858 to Terence Flannagan and afterwards to Frederic la Trobe Bateman. He then worked on railways in mid-Wales before moving in 1868 to India to engineer the Nagpur water supply system. He received the Telford Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1875 for his paper on the Nagpur Waterworks. In 1875, he returned to England as Chief Engineer for Waterworks for the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire where he was concerned with the repair and construction of reservoirs and large water supply projects. He was then offered the post of Chief Engineer to the London County Council in 1890, a post he held until 1902. As chief engineer for the London County Council, his design feats included the first Blackwall Tunnel and Greenwich foot tunnel and, further upstream, Vauxhall Bridge. He was knighted in 1897 by Queen Victoria for services to engineering and elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1905. He also designed, with Sir Benjamin Baker, major parts of London's drainage system, including east London sewage treatment works at Crossness and Barking on the south and north sides of the Thames respectively. Like several other notable engineers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Binnie founded a firm under his name, which his son William took over on his father's retirement. In 1909, Sir Alexander Binnie and Son merged with another engineering consultancy to become Sir Alexander Binnie, Son & Deacon; later it became Binnie & Partners and from the 1990s it has been part of the multi-national Black & Veatch consultancy. Binnie married, in 1865, Mary Frances Eames, the daughter of Dr. William J. Eames, of Londonderry. Lady Binnie died in London 21 September 1901.
