Graeme Wall wrote:

The military think it is a very dangerous object. There are around a
dozen people killed every year by WW1 munitions dug up on the Western
Front in Northern France and Belgium and the sludge in those rusty
canisters is 90 years old.

There was also the danger that this particular one was sitting on top of a
gas main.

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't the location of this one almost
exactly upon the site of the original "Big Brother" house, that they used
for the first couple of years, before relocating to Elstree?