THE gate at the bottom of Darwen Tower has been unlocked, after a ‘Darwen joker’ bolted it shut.

The tower, which had its dome replaced by apprentice engineers at Darwen metal fabricators WEC after the original blew off in November 2010, was officially reopened by the mayor of Blackburn with Darwen, Coun Karimeh Foster, on Friday.

But upset Darreners who trekked up the moors to climb to the top of the tower this weekend found it was locked.

WEC spokesman Jean Dziki said the tower should be open and, as far as they knew, it had been left unlocked on Friday.

However, yesterday morning, a representative from WEC went up to the tower to find the door was indeed locked.

Mr Dziki said: “It looks like one of the Darwen jokers has been up and taken a bolt out of the bottom of the door and put it at the top to lock it closed.

“It is a horrible thing to do. I don’t understand why anybody would do that.

“We have opened it up again now.”