A METAL detector enthusiast had the shock of his life after inadvertently taking home an unexploded German World War Two bomb from a Barry woodland.

David Eveleigh had no idea that the mysterious metal oblong he found in the woods would lead to the bomb disposal unit being called to his Ffordd Elin home and evacuating both his and his neighbour's houses.

The bomb unit were called after Mr Eveleigh alerted the police to the dangerous device, thought to have been left over from the days of Barry being bombed by the Luftwaffe.

Grandfather-of-two Mr Eveleigh took up using a metal detector as a hobby 18 months ago.

The 54-year-old usually heads over to Barry Island, and until his latest explosive find he said that some coins from the 1920s had been his most interesting haul.

But last Wednesday he took his metal detector to the woods at Pencoedtre Village and soon got a strong signal from something buried in the mud.

Digging up a long, metal oblong in the ground Mr Eveleigh - a part time support worker for people with learning disabilities - initially thought it was simply a piece of lead.

"I thought, I'll have that and melt it down for weights for fishing," he said.

After taking it home, he left it outside overnight to dry the mud that was caked on it and the next day began cleaning it up.

He said: "I could see these fins and a long thing on the top. I thought it looked a bit like a bomb, so I Googled it and saw that it looked exactly like a mortar bomb.

"I was a bit panicky then."

A call to the police later and Mr Eveleigh's street and the woods were suddenly a bomb disposal scene, with an army unit arriving to evacuate his neighbours and remove the item, under

"They told me they couldn't say why it hadn't exploded," said Mr Eveleigh. "It had landed in soft mud but it wasn't that deep.

"You wouldn't be able to print what I thought."

The incident hasn't put Mr Eveleigh off his hobby though.

"I'm having a couple of days off, but I'll probably get back to it," he added. "I think I'll stay away from those woods though."

A South Wales police spokesman said: “Police received a call from a member of the public who recovered a World War Two mortar bomb from the ground in a wooded area of Barry.

"As a precautionary measure a police cordon was set until police were satisfied the area was safe. Bomb disposal experts recovered the device and the cordon was lifted.”