A MINCHINHAMPTON road was cordoned off and a family evacuated after a novice metal detecting enthusiast feared he had unearthed a bomb.

Part of Butt Street was shut for more than three-and-a-half hours following the discovery by Andy Croxon in The Great Park, which forms part of Minchinhampton Common, around 4pm on Sunday.

Nearby homeowners Bill and Dawn Endacott, whose home in Butt Street lies just metres away, were advised by police to either remain indoors or leave the property while the Army’s 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment (EOD) was dispatched from Ashchurch near Tewkesbury.

The couple chose to stay with friends in the village and Dawn called her 20-year-old son to warn him not to return home.

Mr Croxon, 46, who lives in Slimbridge, was using the metal detector with his partner Suzanne and her two young sons when he came across the device buried just four or five inches below the surface.

He said Suzanne picked it up and carried it for more than 100 yards before they cleaned it off with their hands and saw what they were holding.

"I had seen things like that before and went into a cold sweat when I realised what it was," said Mr Croxon, who works with adults with learning difficulties for Stroud-based agency Aspirations Care.

He had only recently borrowed the device, and had found a Roman coin and a musket ball near Brockworth the day before.

"I called Stroud police station and within 10 minutes three or four police cars turned up and they closed off part of Butt Street," he said.

The cylinder-shaped device, which was roughly 10 inches in length, was later identified as a harmless spigot mortar shell - dating from sometime between the First and Second World Wars.

It would have been used as a practice round, possibly by American GIs who set up camp in the area for around three months during the Second World War in the build up to D-Day in 1944.

Mr Croxon was asked to email a picture of the shell to the bomb squad using his phone before they arrived.

Following an X-ray inspection to ensure the shell was inactive, the EOD squad removed it before police reopened the road around 7.30pm.

The spigot was later destroyed.