MASTER thatcher Simon Holloway has pulled bits of old newspaper, cigarette packets and plenty of rats out of roofs without batting an eyelid.

But an unexploded Second World War bomb gave him and colleague Bill Taylor pause for thought when it dropped on to their scaffolding with a worrying clunk.

The pair quickly downed tools at the Lygon Arms Hotel in Broadway where they were working on Saturday afternoon and raised the alarm.

Officers from the Royal Ordnance took the bomb, stamped with the year 1937 and German text, to a nearby field, buried it, and exploded it after the discovery at 3.15pm.

Mr Holloway, aged 41, said he and Mr Taylor had removed four layers of thatch dating back more than 100 years from the 20ft-high building.

"We were taking it off and it just fell out on to the scaffolding," he said.

"When we realised what it was we got off pretty quickly."

"It was lucky it didn't fall off the scaffolding as it might have exploded."

The pair later watched the bomb, buried in the ground and covered with sandbags, explode, sending a shower of soil into the air.

"People always ask us what have we found in the roof? You quite regularly find newspapers, cigarette packets and sweet wrappers, but this was a bit different," said Mr Holloway.

"It's quite unusual to find four layers of thatch. The bomb must have dropped out of the sky, landed in the roof and just got covered up."

The roof was being re-thatched as part of a conversion to turn the building into accommodation for the hotel, situated in the High Street.

The hotel declined to comment on the incident.