John Markham Jones was born in 1869 and was apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner in Oxford. Between 1889 and the inevitable military service in the Great War from 1914 he worked his way up to become a General Foreman in charge of individual building projects for the local architects of the day.

Home from the war in 1918, and with the cash resettlement grant available to returning soldiers, he formed a building and joinery company J.M.Jones and Sons Ltd. with three of his four sons.

In the 1920’s the company began to forge a reputation for quality work among the local authorities and private clients who had entrusted JMJ with individual house projects and post war rebuilding work. The 1930’s saw JMJ involved with larger buildings and these included hotels, multiple housing and public buildings in the Southern Counties of England.

john markham jones
founder & chairman 1918 - 1949

The period from 1937 to 1947 was one of sustained growth with all the resources of JMJ switched to pre-war military work and the construction of airfields, coastal defences and bomb protection shelters. The post war period saw JMJ involved in the enormous task of helping to rebuild the UK housing stock and make good the country’s war ravaged cities.

JMJ became closely involved with the development of high rise apartment building technology, with the use of specialised offsite concrete production lines and timber home methods, in a bid to answer the huge demands of the post war baby boom of the 1960’s.

By the end of the 1970’s JMJ was among the largest regional construction groups in the UK and was increasingly involved in its own commercial and residential housing projects. This trend has continued with substantial growth in property investment and development work to the end of the century.

Between 1975 and 2005 JMJ began to work outside the UK with its first residential and commercial developments in Paris. Larger projects followed in northern Virginia and San Francisco in the USA as well as residential work in Switzerland and France. Since late 2004, and answering a request from the UK Foreign Office, JMJ have become closely involved in reconstruction work in Iraq with multiple housing and commercial projects.