Longest-serving member of Newark Golf Club dies at 93

A funeral service takes place on Monday for a man whose family ran a successful textile company in Newark for six generations.

Mr Patrick D’Arcy Mumby, 93, who died on November 7, joined the family firm of Mumby and Son Ltd in 1947 and became joint managing director in 1965. At its most successful, the firm employed 200 people.

Mr Mumby was also well-known in golfing circles, having belonged to Newark Golf Club for 79 years, making him the longest-serving member.

Mr Mumby was fifth in a succession of six generations working for the family firm, which started in Nottingham in 1874.

It expanded into Newark in 1881 and continued to be a major employer in the town until it closed in 1977. The Appletongate premises are now occupied by Buildbase.

Mr Mumby was born in Newark in 1925 and grew up at The Grove on London Road, Balderton – the first house in the village to have electricity as it had its own steam-powered generator.

He recalled growing up in the grand house and its extensive gardens, where he first enjoyed hitting golf balls across nearby fields.

He was educated at Gresham’s School in Norfolk, where he enjoyed maths most, and might have studied it at Cambridge, had not the war intervened and closed the subject to undergraduate study.

Instead he studied mechanical sciences at Cambridge, where he also represented the university at hockey, gaining a blue, and at golf.

He did his National Service as an engineer officer in the Royal Navy for two years before joining the family firm in 1947.

He gained experience in all aspects of the company, and was the first Mumby to travel to the USA on business.

Mumby and Son Ltd specialised in men’s formal wear, and became known for their Trent brand suits.

During the second world war the company produced more than 315,000 uniforms for the British armed services. As hostilities came to an end, they clothed more than 20,000 men in Government-issue de-mob suits.

When the business closed he returned to education, and taught maths for several years.

Mr Mumby was 14 when he became a member of the golf club, where his father, Mr Harold Mumby, had been president from 1937-49, and where he himself was club captain in 1969.

His proudest moment with the club winning the Scratch Club in 1974, one of the most prestigious competitions at the club. Even when he stopped playing he was still a regular social visitor.

Mr Mumby was a former president of Newark Chamber of Commerce, and a former chairman of both the Midlands Clothing Manufacturers’ Association and the Clothing Manufacturers’ Federation of Great Britain.

Mr Mumby and his late wife, Patricia, had four children and seven grandchildren. Monday’s funeral service will take place at 2.30pm at All Saints’ Church in Coddington, where the family lived for many years.