Brean beach — artillery shell
16 January 2024 · Burnham & Brean, Somerset
View this record on the map →- Date
- 16 January 2024
- Record type
- Found UXO
- Location
- Burnham & Brean, Somerset
- Position accuracy
- Rough area
What happened
An angler discovered a WWII-era artillery shell on Brean beach. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team moved the device, buried it and detonated it.
How it was made safe
Moved down the beach, buried in the sand and detonated in place.
Evacuation
Nearby properties evacuated as a precaution.
Also worth knowing
Finds recur along this coast for a reason: Berrow Flats formed part of the Stert Flats North Range, used heavily for practice bombing and gunnery. More than 3 million .303 rounds and 1 million 20mm rounds were fired there. A separate find in July 2020 — a shrapnel bomb fuse head roughly the size of a rugby ball — was detonated on the same beach after an eight-hour coastguard cordon. This point sits on the tidal sands, seaward of the administrative coastline, so it falls outside the drawn county outline while still belonging to Somerset.