The army disposed of an unexploded bomb found on a golf course this morning.
Wiltshire Police were alerted to the discovery at Ogbourne Downs Golf Club at around 9.30am, which was followed by an immediate call to the bomb disposal unit.
Club manager James Short said he’d found the item the previous evening (Sunday) when he was carrying out a routine check of the course metal detector in-hand.
With the golf course closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown and having no idea what the item was, he hid it on the site and returned home to research his find. In the morning, on internet advice, the police were contacted.
“The police were on scene within 15 minutes”, Mr Short told Wiltshire 999s.
Adding that he was “looking for metal which could damage our mowers” when he found “what’s believed to be a British two-inch mortar shell buried only slightly below the surface”.
In the golf course’s 100-year history, nothing of this nature has been found.
The World War Two mortar was safely dealt with by the Royal Logistics Corps’ Bomb Disposal Unit, consisting of a controlled explosion heard for miles around.
