Archibald Findlay

Archibald Findlay was a prolific breeder of potatoes who is thought to have invented the first blight-resistant potato in the nineteenth century.

Born in 1841 in Markinch, Fife, Findlay became the publican of the village’s Portland Bar. In light of the Great Famine and the devastating spread of potato blight across Ireland and into Scotland, Findlay began raising his own potatoes in gardens and small tracts of land around Markinch.

Using cross-pollination to develop hybrids, he brought out his first varieties in the 1880s and in 1891 released Up to Date, which became the leading variety in England in the early 1900s. He was also responsible for a wealth of other potato varieties, including the highly successful British Queen and Majestic.

Findlay had a talent for promotion: he organised annual potato picnics, to which people travelled from across the country to visit farms and enjoy lavish hospitality. With business booming, Findlay purchased Mairsland Farm in nearby Auchtermuchty, where he bred cattle and horses in addition to potatoes, before expanding further by buying Langholme Farm in Lincolnshire in 1905.

Such was the impact of Findlay’s breeding success that he would go on to claim that 98% of the potatoes fed to British troops in World War One were the result of his breeding work. Unfortunately, after the war, wet weather and flooding played havoc with Findlay’s Lincolnshire crops and he returned to Fife, where he died in 1921 aged 79.