GREAT-GRANDMOTHER Maisie Page, who spent more than 40 years with six bombs in her garden shed, said she had "forgotten all about those old things".

The 80-year-old, who moved out of the house in Chiltern Avenue, High Wycombe last Friday, was astonished to hear that the family who moved in had discovered the live bombs in the shed over the weekend.

She said: "I knew they were there because my husband used to defuse the things but I'd forgotten all about them.

"I remember going out to the shed at the time he brought them home and saying 'What are these things in here?' and he just said 'Oh, don't worry, they're bombs but they've been defused'."

Mrs Page, who now lives in Holmers Farm Way, said that her husband Geoffrey had worked for the Ministry of Defence in Princes Risborough during the Second World War.

She said: "It was all 'hush hush' stuff but I know they used to collect the bombs the Germans dropped and defuse them.

"He brought them home as souvenirs when the war finished but he would never have just popped them in the shed if he'd known they were live."

Lindsay Turner, who moved into the house with his partner Angela Bason and two children, found six live bombs on Monday around 6 ins in length, some dating back to the Second World War and others to 1912.

Police were called out alongside army bomb disposal experts, who carried out two controlled explosions in a nearby field.

A spokesman for the RAF Northolt bomb disposal unit, said: "The rusty shells had been fired previously during the Second World War but they were still highly explosive."

Miss Bason, 33, said she was worried that her children, Coral, eight and six-year-old son Louie might have explored the shed and discovered the devices.

Mr Turner added: "I think we will have to be a bit cautious when digging around in the garden because who knows what else will be hanging around."