Accomplished Welsh coal mining surveyor and mineral valuer.
William Albert Morgan Jones was born on 28 November 1929 in the Ogmore Valley, Glamorgan, Wales. His early education was at Fronwen Council School, Ogmore Grammar School, and the Treforest School of Mines, Pontypridd.
In 1946, he entered the coal mining industry as a student mining surveyor with the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Associated Collieries Company, at the Wyndham and Penllwyngwent Collieries in the Ogmore Valley. He qualified as a statutory mining surveyor in 1951 and as a Professional Associate of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1955.
Mining expertise
After working at the Llanharan and Oaklands Collieries, William was appointed to the original Margam Mine Project in 1953, in the No. 2 Tondu area of the South Western Division of the National Coal Board.
In 1955, he was appointed Subsidence Research Surveyor in the North Western Division of the National Coal Board, in Manchester. After four years of research into coal mining subsidence in the Lancashire and north Wales coalfields, he took up an appointment as a mineral valuer in the Valuation Office, Board of Inland Revenue, Cardiff. William was appointed Mineral Valuer, Wales and Southwest England, in 1972, and Superintending Valuer, Minerals, in 1984.
Achievements
In the New Year’s Honours List of 1989, William was appointed a Commander of the British Empire, Civil Division, for his services to the Board of Inland Revenue.
In 1951, at the age of 21, he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, achieving a Senior Fellowship in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors in 1973 and a Fellow of the Institution of Mining Engineers in 1974. In 1976, he became Chair of the South Wales Branch of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, as well as President of the Minerals Division in 1984.
After retiring in 1989, William completed a BSc in geology at Birkbeck, University of London, graduating with Honours in 1993.
Home geology
In his younger days, William played rugby football for Bridgend, Sale, and Manchester. Throughout his life, William held a deep interest in geology and, in his later years, was engaged in re-mapping his home, Ogmore Valley, and compiling a history of mining in the Valley.