Denis Mason Jones

He was perhaps best known professionally for his design of Bodington Hall, the Leeds University hall of residence at Lawnswood, for which he

was awarded the Leeds Gold Medal in 1964, an annual prize given by the William Hoffman Wood Trust, founded by the Leeds architect of the same name.

Mr Mason Jones was an early advocate of conservation and, as a member of the then Ripon Diocesan Advisory Committee, was involved in the restoration of numerous churches, including supervising the restoration and cleaning of Leeds Parish Church.

As a partner in Jones & Stocks, the family architectural practice, he also designed many schools, offices and industrial buildings.

He was an affable, kind and humorous man with a compulsion to record, in words and sketches, the impressions and incidents of his life. He put them into a collection of meticulously kept scrapbooks – an enthusiasm he inherited from his father – which he began during his wartime service in Africa and which eventually totalled nearly 100.

They were filled with sketches of buildings, family activities, holidays, cartoons and stories for his four children, all in his very distinctive style.

Mr Mason Jones was born in Linton, near Wetherby, the younger son of William Alban Jones (known as Billy) and Bertha, and educated at Scarborough College, which he left at 16 to work as a bricklayer for a Tadcaster builder who was converting a barn in Linton into the Jones's family home.

Two years later, he went to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, to read architecture.

A snapshot on graduation day in the summer of 1939 showed Mr Mason Jones with five friends – he was the only one to survive the Second World War.

He was commissioned with the Royal Engineers, but while clearing mines on a Commando raid in North Africa in 1943 he was blown up by a mine which shattered his right arm. He had to endure a day's march to the nearest medical help and spent 18 months in and out of hospital. He then became an instructor "showing chaps how not to lift a mine."

After the war, he completed his professional training, gaining the Honours Diploma of the Architectural Association, in London, where ex-service veterans and younger students worked together in crowded but invigorating conditions.

He was awarded an ICI post-graduate scholarship to study in Zurich, before joining a partnership in London where he did the large-scale drawings for the redesign of Parliament Square, which was approved by the House of Commons.

Life in London was austere but enjoyable. He shared a house with six architects and painters, in an informal and creative atmosphere that was at times so disorganised that a large bicycle was once lost in a room for six weeks.

Mr Mason Jones, and his elder brother Kenneth, eventually joined the practice in Leeds established by their father in 1918 with John Stocks. He remembered that his father was never happier than at the drawing board at home, whistling Gilbert and Sullivan and designing buildings into the small hours, always giving the impression of someone who was completely happy and contented with what he was doing.

His son lived his life in the same spirit, with an irresistible enthusiasm, affability and sense of humour.

The practice grew strongly with commissions for university halls of residence, schools, industrial buildings, housing and competitions. Denis Mason Jones won a press-sponsored competition for the development of London's South Bank after the 1951 Festival of Britain.

In 1966, he was elected president of the West Yorkshire Society of Architects, following his father who held the office in 1926 and becoming the society's first "second generation" president .

He was also involved with the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, the Civic Trust and Yorkshire Heraldry Society and was a longstanding member of the Leeds Club where, as a great raconteur he captivated audiences at many public and private functions

In retirement, he combined three lifelong interests – old buildings, map-making and heraldry – and designed a series of full-colour pictorial maps featuring the historic buildings of a city or locality. These he marketed as Heritage Maps with his wife Dr Mary Jones, a retired specialist in the menopause, HRT and osteoporosis.

The Duke of Edinburgh commissioned copies of the Cambridge and Edinburgh maps as Chancellor of those cities' universities, and Walt Disney commissioned a map of The Castles of Britain for the Epcot Centre in Florida.

Mr Mason Jones is survived by his wife of 56 years, Mary, his four children Nicholas, Mark, Rosalind and Crispin, nine grandchildren and a great granddaughter.

A memorial service will be held at Leeds Parish Church on Friday, March 26, at 11.15am.