THERE wouldn’t have been many men more popular in Darwen than Eddie Yates in the years after the Second World War until he retired in the late 70s.

He was a prominent solicitor, a long-serving member of the town council and was mayor from 1947 to 1949, later becoming an alderman.

He was chairman of the Grammar School governors and in 1970 became the borough’s last Freeman.

In 1972 he officially reopened the Tower after sterling fundraising by Coun Dr Bill Lees.

While many Darwen folk knew Eddie, who was christened Edwin, or at least knew of him, back in the 60s just about everybody with an interest in the community knew his telephone number.

In those days telephone numbers were shorter, my office phone when I was covering Darwen for the Telegraph from an office in Railway Road in the early 60s – Eddie worked next door – was Darwen 25; my home number was Darwen 24.

Eddie, who lived in Sunnyhurst Lane, could be contacted on Darwen 103.

With his initials in front, it was also his car registration and it was probably one of the first personal number plates in East Lancashire.

I remember EY 103 on a green Mini Cooper which Eddie used to park across the road from his office at the bottom of Green Street East.

Over 50 years ago, new car registrations were organised on a local basis and Anglesey had responsibility for the EY coding.

Eddie Yates wrote off to the registration office on the island and got a lovely letter by return. No problem! And the lad in the office said they had noted that his home phone number was Darwen 103 – so they gave him that number as well.

And it’s still in the family – more than half a century on.

His son Gerry was over in Darwen the other day from his home in Keighley, showing a small group of local historians a collection of sketches by local artist James Hargreaves Morton which his father had bought at the 1971 auction of Morton’s work; EY 103 is now on his red Lexus.

Gerry recalled the Darwen roots of his family. Eddie’s father, also Edwin, was born in 1872 and the family lived in Robert Street, just off the town centre.

Father John who had been a paper packer was, by the 1881 Census, a grocer. Young Edwin was ‘a scholar’.

There is some evidence that the lad had worked down the mines for a spell when he left school but by 1891 he was a solicitor’s clerk and went on to become an articled clerk before qualifying and opening an office in Lloyds Bank Chambers in Croft Street. He lived in Lynwood Avenue.

  • Mayoral cars often carry personal number plates which go back years. Burnley’s is HG1 and it used to be on an old fire engine. Blackburn’s is CB1.