DARWEN and its Characters is the title of a new book by semi-retired journalist Harold Heys, which will be launched on Saturday as part of the Friends of Darwen Library's homage to the centenary of the start of the Great War.

Important events from the town’s 135-year history are recorded and early chapters have a link to the war.

Many characters are featured, including Coun Dr Bill Lees, the man who saved the Tower, Steve Hartley, boss of WEC, Alan Holden, president of Darwen Camera Club, Paul Browne, Sir Charles Fletcher-Cooke MP, accountant John Jacklin, little Chris Howson, Martha Jane Bury, the ‘White Lady’, reporter Norman Bentley and solicitor Peter Lamster.

And there’s an affectionate chapter on Bill Hunt, the ‘King of Grip Strength’, who was born in 1909 and found his way into the Guinness Book of Records in the unlikely setting of Unity Working Men’s Club, Great Harwood, exactly 60 years ago.

Bill was performing his balancing and strength act during an athletics tournament and his challenge for a new cue-lifting record was the main attraction. The feat rekindled the international fame he had enjoyed before the war.

Everybody knew Bill and Harold writes with warmth about an old boy who loved Darwen.

Bill’s daughter Pat Phizacklea lives in Lower Darwen. She said: “I can’t tell you how proud I was of my dad. Everybody knew him and everybody loved him.”

Harold laments the passing of the town’s pubs and clubs: “A lot have closed or are on their last legs. They used to be the regular haunts of the local characters.”

The book takes in Bill’s early days and the rigorous demands of the sport of weight lifting, through service as an RAF PT instructor in the Second World War when he was acknowledged to be among the legendary figures from the history of physical culture even though he never weighed more than 11stone.

After the war he worked as a drayman with Thwaites for many years.

His feats of strength included going into a handstand on a ladder 6ft above a table – and then jumping down on to the edge of the table still holding the handstand.

He could lift a 12lb block on the end of a fishing rod with one hand and, using one hand, he would swing a heavy mallet in a 180 degree arc, stopping it dead just as it touched his nose. Harold writes: “It was a rather famous nose around town. In his older days Bill Hunt was more Mr Punch than Charles Atlas. He always sported a rather natty trilby to go with the ready smile and his gentle ways.

“Bill Hunt celebrated his 80th birthday in October 1989, continuing to clock up five-mile walks every day whatever the weather. By then Bill and his wife Frances were living at the bottom of Blackburn Road and before that they had lived in Bolton Road, Chapels and Douglas Grove.

  • Darwen and its characters" will be launched at a coffee morning at Darwen Library on Saturday.