IED event in Kent, Appleyard Sports Bar, in Sittingbourne area, United Kingdom on Tue 18th April 2023

Bomb disposal experts are set to detonate a "live" unexploded World War 2 grenade discovered by a groundsman after he picked it up thinking it was a cricket ball. The potentially deadly historical ordnance was found in the last few hours at The Appleyard Sports Bar, in Sittingbourne, Kent, and has sparked a rapid response as police and explosive experts lock down the scene. The Appleyard managing director Mike Farrow said it was the groundsman who found the device during work to plant laurel bushes near a freshly dug 100-foot patio. He said workers had come within feet of the grenade using a digger on site, before the groundsman picked up it up thinking it was a cricket ball. He said: "We found a World War 2 grenade, they are going to detonate it on site as it's unstable. "My groundsman was doing some gardening and he had planted some laurel bushes and we've just dug a huge big patio that's about 100-foot long. "They missed the grenade by about five foot. If they had have had a digger on that. He was planting the laurels and hit something hard, he picked it up thinking it was a cricket ball and it turned out to be a World War 2 grenade." Mr Farrow said police had cordoned off the area, he added: "It's been identified as a World War 2 grenade, and they think it's live, so they will detonate it on site." A spokesperson for Kent Police said: "Kent Police were called at around 12.40pm on Tuesday April 18 after an old grenade was excavated in Gore Court Road, Sittingbourne. "Officers and a Ministry of Defence bomb disposal team attended the scene where it was destroyed in a controlled explosion." Mr Farrow said the area historically didn't have any connection with World War 2 and had been sports fields for the past 100 years or so. He said: "It's always been a sports field for the area, I don't how the grenade has got there, we don't know where it has come from. It's in Kent so maybe during the Battle of Britain something has been dropped, we don't know. "They recognised it as a World War 2 grenade. It's just a bit of a shock."