Trouble brewing

You write, in a background piece about the acquisition of the McEwan and Younger’s brands, that “William Younger founded Edinburgh’s historic brewing industry when he set up his firm in Leith in 1749”.

The Edinburgh brewing industry is far older than 1749, and William Younger never started a brewery in Leith.

Although this claim, or something similar, has been made many times in the past 150 years, William Younger was 16 in 1749, which was merely the year he moved from the family home in Linton, Peeblesshire to Leith.

There is no actual evidence that he was ever a brewer. His widow, Grizel, certainly ran a brewery, after the death of her second husband, Alexander Anderson, who was a brewer in Leith, and William’s two sons, Archibald Campbell Younger and William Younger II, were also brewers.

It was these two sons of William Younger who should be regarded as the real founders of the concern that eventually became Scottish & Newcastle Breweries.

Martyn Cornell

Stanley Road

Teddington, Middlesex