[2] In 1749, William Younger left home for Edinburgh, aged 16, and whilst it is often speculated that he found employment in Robert Anderson's brewhouse in Leith, there is no documentary evidence for this.

He also bought a part share in a brig on the London-Leith run, named William of Leith which also carried cargo as far afield as Hamburg and Danzig.

[3] In 1793 he opened new and even larger premises in the North Back Canongate (now Calton Road) on a site that disappeared later with the building of Waverley Station.

The new brewery had two malt floors, each a hundred feet long, a spring water well, and ten tuns each capable of brewing thirty barrels.

In The Beauties of Scotland, Robert Forsyth stated that "The ale which has acquired the highest reputation, and is now bought up with great avidity in London and other distant markets, is that prepared by two brothers who carry on business separately, Messrs Younger".

[2] After Archibald died, aged 62, in 1819, William, now 52, arranged the sale of his brother’s brewery and in 1825 expanded his own by purchasing property on the opposite side of Horse Wynd for £5,000.

By the time of his death in 1842 William had joined forces with fellow brewer, Alexander Smith, and was exporting Scotch ales to New York and St. Louis in the United States, as well as Britain’s overseas colonies.

By 1856 San Francisco was receiving regular shipments, and in the following year Philadelphia, Montreal, Baltimore and New Orleans joined the rapidly growing list of new markets, as did the Caribbean islands, Buenos Aires and even Honolulu.

The London branch moved eventually to Princes Wharf, Commercial Road, Lambeth, in 1932 and was sold off in the 1970s to make way for part of the South Bank Development.

[5] The company’s overseas trade had grown so rapidly that 80,000 barrels a year were leaving the London stores alone for sixty overseas-based agencies.

Cargoes were being carried from Leith to Belgium which became a principal market; private customers included the Czar of Russia and his household; and deliveries were finding their way across the world to destinations ranging alphabetically from Alexandria to Zanzibar.

[2] Growth continued throughout the Great War, and in 1920 the firm installed its first bottling plant for new fashioned chilled and carbonated beers in the Holyrood Brewery.

[2] Despite its healthy level of authorised capital and dividends, the onset of the Depression in 1930 induced the board to propose a merger of the company with its great Edinburgh rival McEwan’s to form a new combine to be known as Scottish Brewers Ltd. with effect from 6 December 1931.

[6] Scottish Brewers continued to increase its market share in the brewing sector, doubling its output after a costly five-year programme of expansion and modernisation undertaken between 1958 and 1963.