The following story came to me as an Ilford Press Release in November 2005 from Stephen Webb & Rosemary Thorpe of Sovereign Public Relations Ltd, trading as SWC Media Services. The following pictures were all attached to their e-mail, reproduced here with my thanks.

"At home; In the country - I'm all for ILFORD Selochrome film. It gets results."
For other slogans, see near the top of the Ilford chronology webpage.

SWC Media wrote "The debate concerning the longevity of 'silver based' film and photographic prints compared to digital storage and output took a decided leap forward for the film corner when an old roll of 'ILFORD Selo Extra Fine Grain Panchromatic' film was discovered which was able to produce prints of a very reasonable quality.

Keen amateur photographer Mike Ellis purchased a photographic job lot through e-Bay from a seller in New Zealand. When the consignment arrived, Ellis found it included a Leitz reloadable cassette which contained the roll of ILFORD Selo film which ceased production some 50 years ago. Ellis decided to see if there were any images on the Selo film, so he put it into a bath of ILFORD ID-11 for seven minutes "with fingers tightly crossed."

"Although the film was very tightly rolled and was showing what appeared to be emulsion cracks, I was able to process 10 usable images,” says Ellis. “Judging by the cars shown in the images, which feature a campsite, I estimate these were shot in the 1950s, or possibly earlier.”

The name 'Selo' first saw the light of day from around 1920 when a company by that name was formed by ILFORD and other UK photographic film manufacturers (principally Imperial and Gem), to carry out joint R&D and film manufacture, with each contributing company selling the Selo products under its own labels. The 'Selo' company was situated in Woodman Road, Brentwood, Essex. The 'Selo' company came solely under Ilford management around 1930 when Ilford took ownership of the other photographic companies that originally formed Selo (including Rajar, where Ilford acquired their current site at Mobberley, Cheshire).

Although the name 'Selo' was officially dropped from the factory name in 1946, the Brentwood buildings continued to be known as 'The Selo Factory' until the site was sold and subsequently levelled in the 1970s. The 'Selo' film brand continued to be used by Ilford until around 1968, on Selochrome Panchromatic in 120 roll film format.

The 'ILFORD Selo Extra Fine Grain Panchromatic' film processed by Mike Ellis was a fore-runner to the highly respected Ilford FP film series, which became FP4 Plus in 1990.