EWS a wartime remnant

I've often wondered what these faded letters on Preston New Road stood for. They're too far from the railway to stand for English Welsh & Scottish. They are repeated round the corner on Buncer Lane where they've recently been re-painted. After photographing them today I thought I'd try and google them. I found a story from the Lancashire Telegraph in January.

"The luminous letters stand for Emergency Water Supply.

In 1939, in preparation for air raids by the Germans, all local authorities had to provide emergency water supplies for fighting fires, in case supplies of mains water were damaged by Nazi bombing."

They must have had good paint in the late '30s

You can read the whole article here:
Lancashire Telegraph article