On Sunday (31/5) a ‘suspicious device’ was found by a member of the public fishing on the River Cam. 

The device, which turned out to be a second world war-era hand grenade, was reported to staff at Trinity College. 

Police were called to Trinity Street at around 5 pm and members of the Army's Unexploded Ordnance Team later attended the scene. The Team then "carefully moved the device to the St John's Playing Fields," a spokesperson for St John's College explained.

Cambridge Police told Varsity that the grenade was destroyed in a "small controlled explosion".

Nobody was harmed in the incident but local residents were confused by the loud noise.

Such events are not unusual in the UK, with the Construction Industry Research and Information Association reporting that over 15,000 items of ordnance were found in construction sites across the UK between 2006 and 2009.

Unexploded devices, owing to bombing strategies in the second world war, are usually concentrated in large cities, such as London and Birmingham. Such discoveries are unusual in Cambridge, particularly as the city largely avoided major bombing campaigns during the second world war.