STAFF fled from an engineering firm when a member of the maintenance team unearthed what was thought to be an old unexploded bomb.

Around 170 people from Gilbert Gilkes and Gordon cleared the Canal Head site, in Kendal, after a worker found a device when he was moving machinery.

Firemen and police sealed the area off with a 200-metre cordon and an Army bomb disposal team was called in from Catterick to investigate on Tuesday.

Andrew Bingley, of Flookburgh, made the discovery as he was relocating a piece of equipment in the work store.

"We were digging a hole for a machine to go in and we dug it out.

At first we thought it was a bit of scrap metal but then we saw fins on it.

"We chucked it out to the side of the hole, we didn't realise, but then we were looking at it and it looked a bit like a bomb so we rang Geoff Whitehead."

Mr Whitehead, operations manager at the pump and turbines manufacturers, said he took a look at the half-metre long device and cleared the building by setting off the fire alarm.

"It looked very much like a mortar bomb so I made an instant decision to clear the building.

I couldn't take any chances," he told the Gazette.

Bomb disposal experts arrived to check out the artillery and gave the all-clear after making sure it was not explosive.

It was found to be part of a tail piece of a rocket from the Second World War.

Managing director Peter Hensman said he was not worried by the find but took the necessary precautions.

"We had to play it safe - any potential danger had to be checked out by professionals.

In the end I was relieved that we didn't have to have a controlled explosion because if they had to carry one out it would have caused a mess.

"I have no idea how it got there, I suppose it is one of the hazards of being in an old building."

Kendal historian John Marsh said he was not surprised by the find as the town was a munitions factory in the First and Second World Wars.

"They used garages and all sorts of places for ammunitions.

Gilkes was a government firm and it is likely they produced rocket tail fins at Gilkes as part of a combined effort from 1930 to 1945."

Personnel at Gilkes were allowed back into the offices but most had been sent home for the day after the disruption had left them standing in the rain for an hour.

The incident comes at the end of a very busy period for the engineering firm, which is trying to meet deadlines at the end of a six-month production slot making water turbines and pumps to export to Scotland and across the UK.

"It has come when we were trying to get everything out of the door," said Mr Whitehead.

"It has knocked our deadlines back by about six hours, which is not too serious but we are going to have to claw it back."