AN UNEXPLODED shell in Pelynt led to a visit to the village from the Navy’s bomb disposal team.

Retired farmer John Jolliff was walking on a popular public footpath that crosses his land opposite the Jubilee Inn, when he noticed a strange object in the grass.

‘It was just lying there, and when I picked it up I didn’t look at it much. I just put it in my bag along with some glass that was on the ground,’ said John, 86.

‘When I got home I looked at it a bit more, and thought it could be a shell. It was a bullet shaped thing about nine inches long.’

John put the object on his garden wall, but after a friend suggested he ought to report it to the police, he rang 101.

‘The police came and stood guard over it until the bomb disposal squad arrived,’ he said.

‘One of the three staff was quite an expert and described it as a practice shell. They said they would take it away and deal with it.’

John thinks the shell probably dates from the Second World War, as there used to be a small ammunitions store in the field in question.

‘It was used by the home guard,’ he said.

‘After the war my father used it for poultry and pigs. It was knocked down, because it was in the way of a sewage pipe.’