Born on 2 March 1830 at Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, he was the youngest son of Arthur Benoni Evans by his wife Anne, daughter of Captain Thomas Dickinson, R.N.
After early education under his father at the Market Bosworth grammar school, he won a scholarship in 1849 at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating B.A.
This position he held for ten years and designed many windows, including one depicting the Robin Hood legend for the International Exhibition of 1862.
[1] While working for the Indian Reform Association, Evans had met John Bright, and at Birmingham he made friends with Joseph Chamberlain.
[3] Evans knew leading literati of the mid-Victorian period and was later a close friend of Edward Burne-Jones, who illustrated his history of the "Graal".
[1] Evans exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere pictures in oils, water colours and black and white, and practised wood-carving, engraving and book-binding.
[1] In 1857 Evans married Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Francis Bennett-Goldney, one of the founders of the London Joint Stock Bank.