A PLAYFUL game of football led to a group of children being evacuated from a Watchet beach on Tuesday.

Lauren Sherrin, 12, one of ten children visiting Helwell Bay as part of the Knights Templar First School’s Parrot Club, began kicking what she thought was a stone.

But Lauren’s mum and group leader Lisa realised the makeshift ball – a bullet-shaped piece of metal – could be hazardous.

Lisa said: “She just thought it was a big round stone and started playing football with it. As soon as I saw it I thought ‘right, I don’t think we should be kicking that’.

“They went looking for fossils and ended up finding a bomb!”

Quick-thinking Lisa moved the children, aged four to 12, to the safety of a nearby cave while she called the police and coastguard.

The children’s half-hour trip turned into a three and a half hour wait as experts studied the suspicious device.

After much deliberation it was found that the rusty piece of ordnance was in fact the top half of a solid practice artillery round — used in the Second World War.

Lisa said the day turned out to be a great way to get youngsters interested in military history and used the time to teach children about the Army’s presence in the area.

Coastguard officer Simon Bale said: “The beaches around Watchet and the area on North Hill in Minehead were used extensively by the British and American military in the Second World War, resulting in many pieces of unexploded or inert ordnance still lying ar-ound waiting to be discovered.”

Simon said anyone discovering anything suspicious should contact the emergency services immediately.

The Parrot Club is a care service outside school hours where children mainly learn through play.