The death has been reported of Denis Selby, one of the founders of G D Mountfield. He passed away at Maidenhead last week at the age of 96.
In his early days, Denis worked for Shay Lawnmowers, one of the original manufacturers of rotary mowers in the UK, before joining the Army when he was posted to the Far East, where he became a prisoner of war for several years, surviving horrendous conditions, the story of which was a TV documentary a few years ago.
On returning to England, he rejoined Shay who were taken over shortly afterwards by Lansing Bagnall. However he had ideas of creating his own range of garden machinery, and in collaboration with Reg Allett, he designed and built two cultivators, the M1 and M2.
This gave him the platform to extend the extend the range into lawnmowers, and together with Gerry Cohen, Don Hamilton and Bert Jennings he formed G D Mountfield Ltd in 1961, operating initially from premises in East Street, Maidenhead.
The name G D Mountfield was formed from the first initials of Gerry Cohen and Don Hamilton and Mountfield was chosen because of Denis Selby’s admiration for Lord Mountbatten of Burma.
In 1967, he was joined by Roy Ashwell, previously with Hayter and so began a sustained period of growth for the company during the 1970 and 1980s, manufacturing a wider and wider range of garden machinery from its Reform Road factory at Maidenhead.
At one time it was reported that Mountfield had made a bid to buy Hayter, but they were beaten to it by Greg Hutchins of the Tomkins Group.
In 1985, Mountfield was sold to Ransomes for a reported £4.25 million when Denis and Don Hamilton retired. Today Mountfield is part of the Italian-based Global Garden Products group (GGP).
