A GARDENER who uncovered a live hand grenade in York had been hitting it repeatedly with a digger just moments before the discovery.

Nick Wright was working with his colleague Steve Whiting in the rear garden of a house in MacLagan Road when they found the explosive device, and said he felt very lucky the incident had not ended differently.

"We were levelling up the subsoil and dismantled a rockery, levelling it with a machine," he said. "Steve said 'I think you've stood on something there, it looks like a grenade'. Laughing and joking, I picked it up and thought 'It doesn't look like a toy'. It felt quite heavy."

Mr Wright added: "It makes you think of the risk when we have been handling it. The pin was still in but it was quite old and corroded so it could have gone off at any time, really.

"I had been hitting it with a digger when we were digging the rockery out, and goodness knows how many times I must have knocked it. Needless to say, I will be buying a lottery ticket this weekend."

After phoning North Yorkshire Police's non-emergency number Mr Wright said there was some confusion in the control room.

He said: "We rang 101 and said 'I'm sorry, have I spoiled your day?', she said 'I don't know what to class it as', so I told her 'it's a bomb'."

Eventually, an Army bomb squad arrived from Catterick Garrison, confirmed the item was a grenade, and arranged for it to be safely detonated in a nearby field.

Mr Wright , owner of York-based Gardenscape landscape gardeners, said: "Apparently it was a Mills 36, British-made, classic pineapple type. You pull the pin out, the spring clip goes, and lob it. There's a seven second delay. Potentially it could have been nasty and could have resulted in nasty injuries if it had gone off but apparently it's more common than you think.

"We went to watch it explode and the farmer was offered the chance to detonate it but didn't want to, so I jumped at the chance. They dug a hole, stuck it in and wrapped it in a charge, then came back with a wire into a gizmo box with buttons on it, stuck the wires in and gave me some instructions. I had to shout 'QUIET', 'STAND BY', and 'FIRING', then pressed the buttons and off she went. It was quite a good bang, but they reckoned quite a lot of that was the explosives they used, not the grenade."