TWENTY-FOUR highly dangerous home-made bombs were found in a front garden of a London Colney house this week.

The Second World War bombs, made by members of the Home Guard, were safely detonated by a bomb squad at around 10pm on Monday night, hours after their discovery.

Grant Lowrie, of the High Street, stumbled across the 13 milk bottle shaped bombs and a plauque declaring AW BOMBS' at 6pm as he dug up a tree in his front lawn.

He immediately called the fire service and firefighters sealed the area telling residents to stay inside and shut their windows.

The bomb squad unearthed a further 11 bombs and transported them to the nearby Old Verulamiun Rugby Club, off the North Orbital Road, where a controlled explosion was made in a skip filled with sand.

Group Commander Ian Markwell, who was at the scene, said: "The man is very lucky that he didn't smash any of them, they would have just exploded in his face. They are extremely dangerous.

"When we arrived he had lined up four of them along the wall. We recognised them straight away because we were called to similar incident in Park Street about a year ago when the same bombs were dug up in a work yard.

"At the end of the war the Home Guard were given instructions to bury any left over bombs, and as far as we know there are no records of where they were buried."

When the bombs - a mixture of petrol and phospher - smash and are exposed to air they fiercely ignite.

Vicky Lawrie, whose dad Grant discovered the bombs, said: "He was digging and came across these things and then shouted for us to come down and have a look.

"He turned one slightly and found a plaque which said AW bombs and as soon as we saw that we backed away."