A cache of more than 170 unexploded practice bombs dating back to World War II has been found under a playground in the English town of Wooler in the U.K.

All of the bombs still have their fuses and contents, and both the detonation burster and the smoke filling can still be hazardous, the Wooler Parish Council said in a release earlier this month.

The first of the 176 bombs found so far was discovered on Jan. 14 after work began on an expansion of a playground in Wooler.

“I never thought as a parish councilor I’d be dealing with bomb disposal. It’s quite something to think the children have been playing on bombs … We’ve only cleared about a third of all the park and we could still find another pit with more bombs in,” Mark Mather, a member of both the Northumberland County Council and the Wooler Parish Council, told the BBC Sunday.

The town was a center for training the Home Guard citizen militia during World War II, with trainees arriving from around the U.K., Mr. Mather said.

Work to find any other bombs and remove them all, he told The New York Times, is going slowly. Since the site is near an old railway, any railway-related scraps found in the park have to also be investigated to make sure they are not an explosive.

The Wooler Parish Council hopes work can resume on expanding the playground starting in April.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.