An early morning stroll along the beach ended with a surprise for hotel manager Gary Underdown.

The 28-year-old, who works at Judd’s Folly Hotel, Faversham, had been using his metal detector at The Leas, Minster, when he stumbled on a First World War shell.

He said: “It is the seventh one I’ve found in the past year. It was just poking up out of the mud. I really don’t go looking for these – I am a big fan of coins and bullets but these things keep popping up.”

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Gary, of Gladstone Drive, Sittingbourne, made the discovery with his £300 Laser Scout just before 8am on Wednesday at low tide after taking girlfriend Sophie Goddard to work at Store Twenty-One in Sheerness High Street.

VIDEO: Gary has found seven bombs over the past year. Josie Hannett reports

He had already scooped up a handful of ammunition from late 1800s Henry Martini rifles and a musket ball when he found the shell.

He said: “This patch of coast was used as a firing range for First World War soldiers who aimed at targets out at sea.

In the Second World War buoys were moored in the estuary and used as target practice by Spitfire pilots.”

He has also unearthed a stash of coins from the 1960s. He said: “I guess they were lost on the beach when Sheppey was at the height of its popularity.”

Experts for the Royal Navy bomb squad, who were called to make the shell safe, took it away with them.