A super loud bang brought residents in Malvern Road in Gloucester from their homes last night (September 9) leaving families stunned.

The deep boom was significant enough to prise Kingsholm people from their sofas during peak television viewing time.

Residents gingerly opened front doors to peer out into the street – expecting to see a trail of destruction, bomb crater, tail of an aircraft, damage to vehicles, the front of a neighbour’s house missing or the remnants and shrapnel of someone’s boiler.

What greeted them came as another shock – the same peaceful scene of parked cars, twitching curtains and hedgehogs scuttling for cover.

The only difference being the presence of equally baffled neighbours tentatively making their way down garden paths with half a mind of where they could dive for cover – should the blast be the first of many. It wasn’t.

“It sounded like it was right outside my house. I expected to find just four wheels where my car used to be, a hole in the street or the smell of cordite in the air, but there was nothing,” said one resident, who did not want to be named.

“Our house shook. We had the kids coming downstairs to ask what was going on. Our son is studying the Second World War at school and he genuinely asked if he had to be evacuated!

“We told him if it became a regular thing we would dig ourselves an Anderson shelter and take cover there.”