POLICE believe a bomb found in the city was a World War Two hand grenade.

Officers placed a 200 metre cordon around the weapon after it was discovered in a field off Worcester’s Crookbarrow Way on Thursday morning.

It is thought the land was previously used as an army training area.

West Mercia Police received a report about the explosive at 10.40am and it was detonated at shortly before 1pm.

A spokesman for the force said: “The device was believed to be a WWII hand grenade, there was a cordon of 200 metres put in place on the field by the A4440 while the device was safely destroyed by the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD).”

West Mercia Police originally believed the explosive was a rifle grenade but it now thinks it was a hand grenade.

Coach driver Mike Hall, aged 29, from Kings Norton, Birmingham, saw the bomb squad at the scene at around 11.30am, while driving to Bromsgrove to pick up passengers.

He said he last saw an EOD team in 2017, when a 500lb World War Two bomb was found in Aston, Birmingham, near his home.

Rob Adams, county and district councillor for Norton, believes that the bomb was linked to the former Norton Barracks nearby.

He said: "I'm not surprised. I'm sure that [the grenade] is something that's been left over by the training.

"Thousands of soldiers went through Norton Barracks. It's not the first time unexploded ordinance has been found.

"It's the one place in Worcester that this stuff would be found."

Dennis Hodgkins, founder of the Norton Worcestershire Regiment Group, said: "That field was used as a training area.

"Obviously some of the soldiers in the past have probably left them [grenades] there. It's just human error. They keeping finding them.

"It's very disturbing that there are unexplained items out there."

Mr Hodgkins added that Norton Barracks was a major training area during the two world wars.

Two live bombs were found in a field at the end of Brockhill Lane, where the barracks used to be located, in November 2016.

The EOD team, from Ashchurch, in Tewkesbury, destroyed the devices in controlled explosions.

Theresa Fisher, who lived 300 metres from where the mortars were found, previously said her grandson had discovered a grenade in the same field in 2015.