William Forrest

As deputy director of the Yorkshire area of the National Coal Board in the 1970s, he was responsible for the development of one of the world’s largest deep coal mining projects, the Selby Coalfield.

When it opened in 1982, it was the first coalfield to be developed for 70 years and he saw it through to successful partial completion before his retirement in 1981.

Mr Forrest, who was known as Bill, was later awarded one of the highest engineering honours.

He started his career as a trainee colliery surveyor in Northumberland, but in 1946 after wartime military service he took advantage of a Labour government scheme particularly for demobbed service personnel, allowing him to study at university.

He graduated from Durham University, with a BSc in mining with distinction and a BSc in mining engineering with first class honours.

Mr Forrest was born in Blyth, Northumberland, the son of a dockyard boilermaker. He was educated at Blyth Grammar School and left at 15 to join Cowpen Coal Company.

In 1938, he joined the Territorial Army Royal Artillery South Shields Regiment and he was called up for military service following the outbreak of the Second World War.

He served in the Middle East where he first saw action in the successful British campaign against the Italian army in Eritrea in February 1941. He was later part of Operation Crusader, led by General Auchinleck, to relieve Australian and New Zealand forces trapped at Tobruk and remove Rommel from Eastern Libya. He received only a minor injury – inflicted by a slamming door when clearing Germans from a building in Derna.

In 1942 after Rommel had forced the Eighth Army to retreat from Libya into Egypt, Mr Forrest fought in the battle at Alam Halfa, in which Montgomery prevented Rommel overrunning Cairo and the Suez Canal.

His final action was at Alamein and the defeat of Rommel. The remainder of the war was spent teaching at artillery schools in Cairo and Wiltshire.

Following nationalisation of the mining industry, he took a graduate course in mining engineering at West Virginia University in the USA.

On his return he went out one night with his sister who had organised what turned out to be a successful blind date for him with a colleague from the local tax office, in Gateshead, Eugenie Burt. They married in 1955.

After some years as a colliery manager and group manager in Northumberland and Durham, he moved to Yorkshire in 1962, becoming chief mining engineer to the North Yorkshire area in 1970, and deputy director in 1973 with special responsibility for developing the Selby deep mining complex.

Mr Forrest was involved in the search and rescue operation at the Lofthouse Colliery disaster in 1973 when the pit was flooded and seven miners were lost. Only one body was ever recovered.

In 1974, he became president of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers and in 1979 was appointed the Institute’s national president. In 1980 he was elected a fellow of the Fellowship of Engineers, said at the time by the Duke of Edinburgh, who was the senior fellow, to be an organisation which “consists, quite simply, of the best engineers in the country”.

In the same year he was awarded the Douglas Hay medal of the Institution of Mining Engineers and also became a council member. A year later he was awarded their silver medal

In 1982 he was awarded the OBE for services to mining.

Two years later he was made a freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Engineers

After retiring in 1981, he acted as a consultant for several mining companies, and gained a PhD at Nottingham University in 1987.

He had many other interests, including being a prison visitor for 20 years. He was vice chairman of Wakefield Health Authority in the 1980s, chairman of Wakefield Civic Society and as a key member of Wakefield Rotary Club was prominently involved in their Millennium Project.

This saw the restoration of the only remaining original Charles Waterton observation hide at Walton Hall, in Wakefield.

He was a governor of Wakefield Mining College and chairman of governors of Wakefield Grammar School Foundation.

Mr Forrest’s wife died on Christmas Eve last year and he is survived by his sons, John and Richard, and grandchildren, Freya, Harriet, Ella and William.