FIFTY granite paving slabs bearing the names of all Darwen's First World War dead will be laid around the Boer War memorial.

The location was confirmed after Darwen Town Council approved spending of just over £4,000 on preparation work around the memorial at the bottom of Bolton Road.

Blackburn-based stone-mason Brent Stevenson had offered to provide the slabs free of charge in a project similar to one taking place at Corp-oration Park.

And now a location has been confirmed, work can begin on the slabs, with the first expected to be unveiled on Rem-embrance Sunday, alth-ough the first stones to be installed will not be unveiled until Rememb-rance Weekend next year.

Town Council Mayor Coun Trevor Maxfield said at Tuesday’s meet-ing: “Brent Stevenson has offered to do us 50 granite plaques but we have not got anywhere we can just put them like Corporation Park.

“If we are going to take him up on this we are going to have to spend some money.

“The best site we have come up with is the Boer War memorial but we need to do some work making it disabled frie-ndly and removing some shrubs.”

Coun Maxfield said he had gathered quotes for the work and the cheapest were £775 to remove the shrubs at the back of the memorial and about £3,500 to have block paving put down all the way around the mem-orial.

Coun Maxfield added: “The beauty of this is if we remove the shrubs we give ourselves room to to put more names down in future.

“That means adding names for the Second World War, Falklands and so on.”

Coun Maxfield con-firmed he had verbal permission from borough leader Coun Kate Hollern to carry out the work and have the memorial stones put down.

Coun Dave Smith said: “The back of that, round the side of the bushes, is getting out of control.

“If that gets done up I think it would be a big improvement to that area.”

Councillors unanimo-usly approved the plans and work is expected to be ongoing at the proposed site for the next four years.