The Sheffield Directory and Guide (1828) was one of the first such volumes in the town to carry extensive advertisements for merchants and manufacturers.  One of the most prominent advertisers was C. F. Younge, self-styled silversmith, jeweller, hardware man, and cutler.  Younge’s stock at his High Street emporium included ladies’ and gentleman’s’ watches, silver and plated goods, parasols and French lamps.  Younge also sold cutlery: ‘a choice and extensive assortment of pen, pocket and sportsman’s knives, common and highly-polished scissors, warranted razors of various descriptions’.

Charles Frederick Younge, born on 21 September 1792, was the youngest son of Simon Andrews Younge (1734-1811) and Jane née Hall.  The latter was a successful Sheffield merchant, who had been a partner in the High Street enterprise of Younge, Sharrow & Whitelock.  Simon Younge died in Sheffield on 30 December 1813, aged 80, and was buried in St Paul’s churchyard.  Sheffield Local Register noted: ‘few have been more ready, during a long life, to benefit this generation; none stepped before in benevolence and liberality of spirit’.  

By 1823, Charles was in business on his own account in High Street.  His jewellery and ironmongery business with its ‘extensive showrooms’ was a feature of Sheffield town centre in the 1820s and 1840s.  He registered a silver mark in 1836.  Drake’s Road Book of the Sheffield & Rotherham Railway (1840) carried a full-page advertisement, with the emphasis on silver and plated goods and the foot of the page carried the message: ‘C. F. Y. will have much pleasure in showing his Establishment to Parties passing through Sheffield, as he trusts it will deserve their attention’.

Younge announced his retirement in The Sheffield Independent, 3 April 1847.  In 1850, he was listed as a ‘gentleman’ in St George’s Square.  He was one of the wealthiest men in the town – indeed in the north of England.  He inherited substantial property from his brothers, William and George, who had been bankers.  By 1844, he had moved to Thurcroft Hall, a country house and estate, near Rotherham.  After marrying 30-year-old Emily née Barker in 1863, he moved to another large mansion – Forest Side, Grasmere – where in the following year Emily gave birth to a daughter, Edith Mary.  C. F. Younge died at Grasmere on 17 November 1866, aged 74, leaving under £35,000.  The Younge family vault (which abuts All Saints Parish Church in Ecclesall) records that he was buried in St Oswald’s churchyard, Grasmere, but his remains were later reinterred in the vault by his widow.  He was remembered as a man of ‘sterling integrity and of very kindly disposition, but of singularly retiring habits’.