A magnet fisherman who pulled out a Second World War-era grenade from the River Thames said it was ‘quite a relief’ to discover the explosive was not live.

Trevor Penny, 51, was initially alarmed when he discovered the Mills 36 mark 2 grenade while trawling the riverbed near St Helen's Wharf in Abingdon, on Sunday, May 28.

But his shock faded when he realised the explosive had no pin or plug.

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He said: “I pulled it out and realised it was a grenade. I thought, ‘Oh god not another one. It’s going to be another phone call to the police'.

“It’s happened quite a few times before.

“The other ones have been live, but I knew fairly soon that it wasn’t live because it didn’t have the pin or the plug.

Oxford Mail: Trevor Penny discovered the grenade while trawling the river Thames in Abingdon

“It was stood upwards on the magnet so when I turned the magnet upside down, I could see it was empty, and it was quite a relief.”

Mr Penny, who lives in Thame, believed the grenade had been issued to the Home Guard for training between 1936 and 1942.

He usually takes his finds to the scrap yard, but decided to keep the grenade for himself.

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He has previously discovered other weapons including bullets, swords, warship projectiles, and seven guns.

He is part of the Thame Magnet Fishing group - a group of six fisherman who trawl the rivers of Oxfordshire with magnets in the hope of discovering interesting metal objects.

Oxford Mail: The training grenade did not have a pin or a plug

Mr Penny uses a magnet the size of a tennis ball attached to a piece of rope which can pull in metal items as heavy as one tonne.

He said: “You can feel it getting heavy. If it’s a really heavy item it will take a bit of pulling out. You can feel it as it drags along the riverbed and hits rocks or mud.

“It will get a lot tighter when you have something on there."

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The groups most common finds are nails, screws, and parts of bikes and shopping trolleys – but sometimes they will discover items of greater importance.

Earlier this year, Mr Penny found a 19th century Chinese sword near Botley

He said he preferred the pastime to regular fishing.

He said: “You can stand on the bank and have no fish all day whereas with magnet fishing you get something nearly every throw.

“Sometimes I find things that are interesting. I quite like finding old padlocks, and some of the ones I find are from the 1800s. It’s good to find a bit of history.

“Everybody wants to find a gun. But once you have found several of them, then you don’t want to find anymore.”