A Keighley man was shocked to stumble upon an artillery shell while clearing out his late uncle’s house in Highfield.

James Holmes, membership officer for Keighley’s Royal British Legion, said he was initially told the shell could be live.

“I think the general public need to be a bit more aware, even though I now know the shell was a dud,” he said. “It’s scary to find something like this.”

Mr Holmes, of Braithwaite Road, said bomb disposal personnel safely dealt with the rusty piece of ammunition, and he has been allowed to keep the shell’s metal cap as a souvenir.

He also has a ceramic air raid shelter sign from the Second World War which he discovered in the same house.

He said his uncle, Geoffrey Nicholson, completed two years of National Service in the Royal Artillery Corps in the mid 1950s. He died in May of this year aged 75.