Magnet fisher pulls grenade from River Avon, sparking police response

A magnet fisher in Chippenham pulled more than scrap from the River Avon on Saturday, June 6. A suspected hand grenade was reported shortly after 4pm, and Wiltshire Police closed Monkton Park while bomb-disposal specialists were called in. More than two hours later, the device was declared a practice grenade, but the response showed how fast a casual pull can become a public-safety operation.

The first move when something grenade-shaped comes up is simple: stop. Leave it where it is, do not try to inspect it, do not drag it farther out of the water, and call police immediately. In Chippenham, that meant a cordon around Monkton Park and trained responders taking over the scene instead of a hobbyist trying to decide whether it was scrap.

That caution matters because magnet fishing does not just turn up old bikes, tools and harmless junk. Wiltshire Council warned that people trying their hand at the hobby can fall into rivers or canals, or pull out metal objects that would be dangerous. The River Avon has already shown that risk elsewhere. In Salisbury last year, a magnet fisher out with his children recovered a suspected Second World War Mills bomb, forcing an evacuation of nearby homes and Five Rivers Leisure Centre before Army explosive-ordnance specialists made it safe.

The wider guidance from waterways bodies backs up the same message. The Canal & River Trust and the Broads Authority warn that magnet fishing can bring up ordnance, cause trips and falls, and leave people with cuts or infection from rusty metal. The Broads Authority also advises life jackets because a bad pull can send someone into the water. And the scale of the danger is not trivial: the Engineering and Geophysical Society says 15,000 UXO items were removed from UK construction sites between 2006 and 2008, with 5% estimated to be fully functioning.

Chippenham is the kind of find that resets the whole hobby for a few minutes. A grenade-looking object on the Avon is never just another piece of iron, and the safest reaction is the boring one: back off, clear the bank, and let the specialists take it from there.