HOMES could be evacuated today as experts blow up a massive wartime bomb found in the grounds of a Suffolk school.The main road running past Kesgrave High School could also be closed while the bomb disposal squad detonate the 40-stone, 4ft long device in a controlled explosion.

HOMES could be evacuated today as experts blow up a massive wartime bomb found in the grounds of a Suffolk school.

The main road running past Kesgrave High School could also be closed while the bomb disposal squad detonate the 40-stone, 4ft long device in a controlled explosion.

The ordnance, believed to date back to the Second World War, was unearthed in a school field - near where thousands of children have played over the decades - as archaeologists were on a dig for Bronze Age artefacts.

Suffolk police were called to the school at around 2.40pm yesterday after the device was found and the bomb disposal team, based at Colchester Garrison, was alerted to the discovery.

Police officers set up a 200-metre exclusion zone as a precaution but the school did not need evacuating yesterday.

By the time the bomb experts arrived it was too dark for them to take action and instead they plan to return to the school today to carry out a controlled explosion.

It could see the A1214 main road, which runs between Ipswich and Woodbridge, closed until the work is finished.

A Suffolk police spokesman said: “It could have serious repercussions. We are likely to evacuate homes and we could need to close the A1214 as well.”

The bomb is the second piece of Second World War ordnance to be discovered at the school in less than five months.

On November 18 last year, bomb disposal technicians conducted a controlled explosion after a vintage grenade was found in a wooded area in the school grounds.

The number 36 rifle grenade was found approximately 80 metres from the school building.

Yesterday's find also came on the same day as bomb disposal experts conducted a controlled explosion on an incendiary device in Lowestoft.

The suspected bomb, which caused a major alert in the town, was a Second World War grenade designed to attack invading Nazi troops and tanks.

Suffolk police created a 600m cordon round the industrial estate at Ness Point, the country's most easterly point, after workmen reported an unexploded bomb on Thursday night.

They were digging at Suffolk County Council's waste site in Wildes Street when they saw flames coming from a hole in the ground and extinguished them with sand.

Throughout the night police blocked off Newcombe Road, Gas Works Road and Hamilton Road and a footpath near the beach, as bomb disposal experts from Colchester tried to ascertain what had caused the fire.

Bad light halted their efforts but at around 10am yesterday they gave the all-clear after discovering the bomb was in fact a SIP or Self-Igniting Phosphorus grenade.

The milk bottle-sized grenades were issued to Britain's Home Guard to throw at any invading enemy. They were basically glass bottles filled with highly-flammable phosphorus, which burned fiercely on contact with the air.

But they were never used and it is claimed the Home Guard, not knowing what to do with the unstable weapons, often buried them.

Suffolk police said no-one was injured in the Lowestoft incident and no houses had to be evacuated.