The high court building in Bangalore, Attara Kacheri, was designed by him and built by Arcot Narrainswamy Mudaliar.

Richard Sankey was born in 1829 at Rockwell Castle, County Tipperary, Ireland on 22 March 1829.

Flynn's School on Harcourt Street in Dublin and entered the East India Company's military seminary at Addiscombe in 1845.

During this time he made a small collection of fossils of Glossopteris from the Nagpur district and wrote a paper on the geology of the region in 1854.

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he was commissioned as the captain of the Calcutta Cavalry Volunteers, but was soon despatched to Allahabad where he led the construction of several embankments and bridges across the Yamuna and Ganges.

He was involved in the construction of shelters to advancing troops along the Grand Trunk Road to aid the quelling of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

He received several commendations from his commanders here and later in the taking of the fort at Jumalpur, Khandua nalla and Kaisar Bagh, vital actions in the breaking of the Siege of Lucknow.

Due to the reorganisation of the armed forces following the assumption of Crown rule in India he was transferred to the Royal Engineers on 29 April 1862.

[20] He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath on 25 July 1879,[21] and also commanded the Royal Engineers on the advance from Kandahar to Kabul during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Sankey married Sophia Mary, daughter of William Henry Benson of the Indian Civil Service, at Ootacamund in 1858.