Charles Jones

Charles Jones was an English civil engineer, working primarily on canal tunnels. Despite Jones's extensive career working with prominent engineers (such as John Rennie, William Jessop and Josiah Clowes) on many waterways, he gained a reputation of unreliability and inability, and was dismissed from a number of projects.

Career Jones had experience in masonry and mining; he likely learned his trade in the coalfields of Shropshire or Gloucestershire. He later undertook contracts on the Preston Brook tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal and on the Chesterfield Canal.

Jones gained a reputation for failing upon debts, as well as becoming known for ineptitude and dishonesty. Despite this, in 1783 he was contracted by the Thames and Severn Canal Company to dig the Sapperton Tunnel at 7 guineas per yard, with a completion date of 1788. He was released on the 27th day, to find that the canal company had enacted a lien on his personal belongings as a means of security. The same year, after Jones disappeared on a three-day drinking binge, the canal proprietors gave him a three-month ultimatum to finish the tunnel or resign. after digging just —less than half of the total tunnel length. it appears that a number of employees from the Basingstoke Canal—including Jessop and Pinkerton—were also involved in the project.

Jones's later projects include the Braunston Tunnel on the Grand Junction Canal, described by Alec Skempton as "less than successful". Skempton identified that Jones may also have been the same "Mr Jones" who was briefly employed by Rennie to work with James Spedding on the Bruce Tunnel on the Kennet and Avon Canal. It is possible that Rennie's willingness to re-employ George on an engineering project shows how little he prioritised the project.

In 1830, Charles Jr. had retired through ill health. By the mid-1830s it appears that the family of engineers firm had ceased to trade; one of the last Jones projects was that of the Devonport Waterworks.